Images in your book

Stuart: Foreign. Welcome to another episode of the Bookmorph Show. It's Stuart here with Betsy Warne. Betsy, how you doing?

Guest: I am great, Stuart. Bill, good to be here.

Stuart: You're good. This is actually the third time that we've pressed start on this recording because I keep shifting over my words today and as you can tell, I've got a bit of a croaky voice. So hopefully I'm not going to cough too much during this episode and people can still make sense of what we're saying or what I'm saying.

Guest: Right, right. Well, I will say welcome to the U.S. for those of you who are listening to us. Stuart has been based in the UK for the past couple of years and so this is our first recording with us in the same country. We've yet to do one in the same state, but we are at least in the same country, so.

Stuart: Well, thank you. It's good to be here. Slow progress, 3,000 miles closer. Just need to close the last 700 or so.

Guest: Right, right, exactly, exactly.

Stuart: Yeah, it's good. That's why actually, we had a bit of a hiatus in the show last week because with moving and everything, it just was too much to try and didn't have time to get a show in, unfortunately. So hopefully we're on a good schedule now and can share some great stuff over the summer.

Guest: Very good. I'm looking forward to it. What are we going to talk about today?

Stuart: So today I thought we would talk about what to include in a book. So two reasons for thinking about it. One, because I've had a couple of calls this last week where people were talking about wanting to include various different things, a couple of strategy calls, just talking about how or what to include. And then the second reason it brought it to mind is we just tweaked the product mix slightly so that historically the Probe version of the book, as people head over to the Get Started page, we've got three options to choose from. The pro version of the book included some images already. We just extended that down to the plus range as well, the middle tier, so that by default now includes a couple of images. So thought it was a good time to talk about briefly why we did that, what to include, what not to include, and just generally how to think about going around structuring the content or bringing the content together at least.

Guest: Okay, very good. Looking forward to it.

Stuart: Perfect. As I said, I'm going to try mute when I'm going to cough in the middle of this if I suddenly go quiet. Okay, that might be One. So we'll see how it goes. So where to start? Probably with things that we most often get asked about in terms of including other content, not just. Not just text or words. So some of the common things that people are thinking about are images, but then that extends to slides and screenshots and charts and graphs and all that type of thing. I can't think of anything else. Can you think of any other content types that people often talk about?

Guest: No, I'm sure something will come to me. But right this time,

Stuart: slides are the one that. Slides are probably the most random one that comes up, so we'll mention those ones particularly. But yeah, I think that covers it. So basically the way that we tend to address it is thinking about what adds to the narrative, adds to the journey that people are going from the kind of front page to the last page, but not get distracted with adding things for the sake of adding it. So there's a couple of constraints when you're thinking about adding images, and this goes for whether you're working with us or whether you're doing this by yourself. And that really is kind of the page dimensions, the constraints and page dimensions, and then the constraints of the quality of the image as well. So as you're looking on something, looking at something on screen, then you're seeing it typically at 72 dpi, 72 dots per inch, depending on the screen resolution you've got on your machine, it might be cranked up, but typically when people are adding images to a website, it's around about that. And then for print quality, most printers are asking for something around 300dpi. So don't need to worry too much about what those numbers actually mean. DPI stands for dots per inch, if you're interested, but just that difference between 72 and 300, you can see that for print quality, you want a much higher resolution image. And that's because it has to put the ink on the page in a sharp enough or crisp enough way that it makes sense when it's printed. If you've got too low a resolution image, then it just kind of gets. It's blurry or pixelated is maybe another way of thinking about it. Now, there's lots of other constraints that come into it as well. So the paper quality, the nature of the printing itself, the provider you've got. So text is pretty straightforward. One character looks very much like another character unless you really push in the edges of the envelope. You don't really have to think about text as it's on the page in PDF files, these tend to be printed, but as soon as you start getting into images, then these other constraints do spring up. And that just adds complexity, adds time complication and ultimately cost and delay to the project that you're trying to get out the door. So it's definitely a case to think about having no images to start with and then only adding images that further the conversation, further the discussion, and kind of illuminates or illustrates the point we're trying to make more and moves people further and faster towards the call to action at the back. It's definitely with web page as an example is slightly different because the, the overheads of putting an image on a web page are far less because there's fewer kind of confounding factors. There's fewer things that can cause a problem with it. So it's in a print version. It's definitely that less is or is oftentimes that less is more. So I know that some people think about just adding as many as possible because they just want to. They come from the perspective there's more is more. I know you have quite a few conversations with people like that talking about adding images and ask them how many they've got and then they come up with 20, 30, 40 images they want to include.

Guest: Yeah. And that, I mean, you know, it really becomes. When you, when you look at the book, it takes it from being a clean, easy read, you know, to just. It can really junk up for better, lack of a better term, you know, a book very quickly, you know, if it's not done right, just throwing images in to throw them in. I think sometimes people do it to beef up the amount of pages, you know, it kind of pushes that out and we're pretty good. I think here about saying, hey, if you don't really need it, let's condense it. You know, if it's not pertinent to the actual story or really to the example, if it's not needed, then let's not do it, you know, because we've had some individuals that have approach us with, you know, 24, 25, 30, 30 images and then it becomes a picture book for lack of better. Better too, you know. So, yeah, if it's not really needed and if it's not going to be a good quality, then it, you know, we spend a little time sometimes with these individuals on, on their images and our design team is incredible about doing, you know, working with them, but still, it's just, if it's not going to be just exactly what you need, then it's not worth doing, in my opinion.

Stuart: Yeah, exactly. And I think that that quality is a good thing to dive into a little bit more. So we talked about the constraints on the page and how the actual ink flows onto the paper and there's kind of technical constraints around that. But also in terms of the nature of the image, quite a few times we see kind of cliparty type images or really random set of images that don't necessarily tie things together. So if it is something that you need to include and feel that it does add value, there is something to be said for having consistency through the set. And again, that adds constraints and cost and time to it, because now you try and look through a consistent set of images and you might get 80% of the way there, but not get all the way there. And it might then distract or detract more than it adds. But where possible, if you are going to include images, include something that's stylistically consistent.

Guest: So there's a theme that is a very good point. Yes.

Stuart: And you can see we were talking just before we started recording yesterday, Betsy was talking to some real estate guys and they were referring to some of the stages houses ready for them to sell. And with there's another book that we're just completing similar, kind of similar message. And the before and after pictures in those books or before and after work, the house stager does a lot of it is around consistency and having images that are similarly taken in a similar way, they're lit in a similar way that have maybe a consistent colour theme throughout the house. You can really see just from. Forget about a book, but just from a design perspective, you can see something that is very consistent and stylistically similar looks a lot more pleasing and professional and considered than something where it's just a whole load of haphazard stuff brought together. Yeah.

Guest: You know what? We have a great example right now, a book that we're just in the very, very early stages of. It's a book on elder care. Great author. I hope. We hope we can get Sandy Cooper on one of the podcasts. She's just a really dynamic personality and I've enjoyed our conversation. But she has had a designer, somebody on her team do these. I've mentioned it to these images, the stick figure images, she's copyrighted and everything and they're just great work and that's what she's using throughout the book. And she. She has a whole slew of them. I'm something like 40 of them. But she said, hey, I'm going to Use, you know, a pen with them. So she's, she already knows that she doesn't need to use all of them, but they're just, it's a consistent look, this consistent color and it's going to look good throughout the book, you know, because it's going to be that same theme. So I'm excited to see how though. I mean, I've already seen the images, but I'm excited to see how the placement goes and how it ends up looking in the book for sure.

Stuart: But you mentioned one thing in that when talking about Sandy there, and that's copyright on images as well. That's another problem that we run into quite often, again, as I say, whether you're doing this yourself or whether you're working with us, if you're working with us, any images that you send to us, we ask you to confirm that you've got the correct permissions or copyright to use those images. So quite often we'll see people come through with screenshots taken from something or artwork just downloaded from a website somewhere. And you can really run into problems if you don't have sufficient or the correct permissions to use images in print publications. Quite often some of the stock image sites like Get Images or istock or Canstock will have their licenses vary, so always check. But quite often the standard licenses will be adequate for images used in a project, in a print project, up to maybe half a million impressions. So for most people, in the context that we're talking about, it's very unlikely that you're going to exceed that number of print impressions for a book because we're not talking about selling millions and millions, we're talking about using in marketing funnels and the volumes are typically much lower. So it is the case that for a relatively cost effective amount, you can buy images with the correct licenses, that you can use it in the way that you want to use it. But certainly just taking images from the web because it's. There is something you need to be very, very careful of. And we've passed that message back to quite a few people just to make sure that they're not opening the fellowship for problems further down the track.

Guest: We run into that a lot and we deal with a lot of people may know a lot of financial clients. And so people will send us what is public record, public tax information or insurance information that obviously you can find anywhere, but they'll send us a snapshot of something they found someplace. And yes, that information is, is public record, but that image that they've taken from someone else's website is not. So, you know, I'm like, yes, you can present us with the information, it's that image. And sometimes they just don't understand the difference, you know.

Stuart: Right. Well, it's a good point, isn't it? Just because the underlying data is public record, the work to create that asset, that chart or that image or that table or infographic, that's still copyrighted work to the person that created it in the first place. And it's very easy to full foul that because it's not something that people always think about. The kind of a free and open web. People interpret that a little bit too freely sometimes.

Guest: Absolutely.

Stuart: Charts is a good one to move on to. Charts and tables. So that brings us. We've talked about the kind of print quality constraints and you need high res images in order for them to print in a way that makes sense, actually, just before we move on. The other thing to bear in mind as well is that color books versus black and white books, the cost jumps significantly from one to the other. So color is typically three to four times more expensive even on standard paper stock. So an image that looks good in the PDF version, where the color contrast isn't, the colors are too similar or too close, or the image when it's on the page is too small, so everything kind of the blacks and dark blues and grays all start to blur into each other, you don't get that definition. That's another element to consider as well and another reason why really for the overhead, particularly for the early versions of the books where most people, as we're talking to people, this whole premise of getting something out there to the market to test in there, the kind of lean model of get something out there and see what the feedback is, see how it resonates, see if the whole concept of the book, the funnel that you're trying to follow through on, is the right one to invest further time and money on for those early versions. Again, don't delay, don't waste the time. Having a book with no images out there three months earlier is far better than waiting and testing and spending all of the additional money. Sorry. Is far better than waiting and spending additional time and money to get it there before you've tested. This is always something you can add to later if you get feedback that something is ambiguous or if as you read through something, you feel an image would enhance it. So again, don't. It can be a false economy to add all these things up front when it's perhaps better to wait and do it later. Right, so charts and tables, that's what I was going to talk about, the physical size of the book. And again, I don't know whether this is because people tend to think of things in the, from a screen based perspective. So even looking at a document on screen, being able to zoom into it give us a kind of false, a false equivalency to the actual physical size of the page when it's printed in your hand. So a book that's eight by five with a spine and a border around the text area, that actual area of space, particularly width wise, there isn't that much space. So sometimes we'll see people wanting to squeeze charts and tables in there that are very wide, that once you start reducing them down to fit on a physical page, actually they become pretty legible. Charts have a tendency of moving as merging together. Particularly if you've got many chart lines or data points on there, they can become quite difficult to read. A colored background on the screen sometimes makes things easier to discern. But typically a colored background on a chart in a book doesn't work well because that kind of very lightly graded background just really kind of pixelates when it's printed because you only get a couple of dots per inch to get the color going and it just looks more confusing. Charts, on the other hand, it's not so much a background issue, but you get many columns of small numbers and it just really merges together. So a better way of doing it, well, if you do, if you're working with us and we're doing it, will typically suggest that the chart is spun sideways so that it's, it has more width. But then of course then the height is limited. So. And manipulating charts over various pages doesn't necessarily work because of the physical constraints. And then you lose the thread of what it's trying to perceive and what it's trying to display. So all of these practical constraints as to why it's perhaps more trouble than it's worth, an option to overcome that is to provide that data, if that data is important, provide that a little bit further down the funnel. So we've often talked, and this is really the key thing about what to include is about the context and how someone's receiving the book and how you want to use it in the context of a broader funnel. So if the book was a traditional fiction book and the product was the book itself, then it makes sense to include all of these things in it because the book is the product here. There's virtually no circumstance where we say the book is the product. The book is always leading an introduction to the product further down the line. So with that in mind, there's always opportunity to provide this additional detail in either an email follow up sequence or a webpage specifically set up to it, or a bonus download section of another PDF that you can offer people to download. All these ways that you can include exactly the same information but in another step, another stage in the journey from getting someone to raise their hand because they're broadly interested in the subject, down to specifically doing business with you because they see you as the answer to the problem they're trying to solve. So trying to stuff all of it into the pages of the book is often not the best choice. Having a if you're trying to kind of build on the relationship and develop the relationship and have the opportunity to have multiple touch points with that person, then including this additional content at a later stage is a way to present a super signature. Every time. Every time you send an email saying hey, that seems want to follow up with you I've just got off the call. I just got off the call with someone talking about chapter seven. There was a particular point about this chart or table or whatever it is I want to include. Just got off the call talking about this particular chapter in the conversation. We realized it'd be fantastic if the person could see the data that we were talking about. So here's a link to the chart, here's a link to the table, here's a link to a video walkthrough that I did that just explains this in a little bit more detail. Whatever that funnel opportunity is to follow through and to present them with another email with another touch point, adding additional value, then including it off the page rather than on the page is an option. The other alternative we've talked previously about the back cover copy and how ideally you'll have kind of three steps to lead people to the next step. The first step, the kind of minimum viable commitment or zero commitment. One of the here's some additional resources. Go and check out these videos on our page to learn more about this. Check out these these articles that we've got written on the site or blog posts. Number two. Then follow up and complete the assessment, the thing that really starts to move them forward. And then number three, start working with us. So that's that first step of if this has been interesting, you want to learn more. Then we provide this additional bonus information. This particular domain or URL or place where they can go and get all of this additional information. And it's just really a way of adding value rather than in a more practical way as well, to be honest. Rather than trying to add everything in the pages, just add all that additional stuff in a different place in a way that makes it seem like you've given them two things rather than just one thing.

Guest: I like. That's great. It is. It's adding additional value. I like that idea. Again, people think they're getting something and people love to feel that, you know.

Stuart: Exactly, exactly. And it serves two purposes. It's not only is it given the perception of delivering more, having two touch points rather than one touch point, it's actually delivering something that's more valuable in a better context. And I think that context conversation is one that gets lost a lot because we so often think about the thing and don't think about the context of the thing. So I remember talking about this in some of the earlier podcasts. This kind of context question of how the people receiving it are they. If 99% of the people who are receiving this thing are receiving it as a PDF version, not actually the physical book, then to a certain degree the conversation changes because you know that almost all of the audience is reading it in a PDF form and therefore it's more of a digital asset than a physical asset. If you know that every single person is only ever going to read it in a physical sense, it changes the context, changes the dynamic. If they're in a situation where they're never going to be able to download something in this day and age, I can't think of why that might be. But if they're never going to be able to follow through and get some action somewhere else, then potentially having a digital download is no use. And you have to include it up front because again, the context of how they're receiving it, I mean, some of the other things that change that, change that thought process, things around GDPR now in the, in Europe. So being able to follow up with people after the fact is potentially a challenge because of the new opt in requirement. And don't want to get into that conversation here because it's really not something we're an expert in. But if you have to explicitly ask people if you can follow up with them by email, if you position the book, the digital download, rather than just giving them the option to download it and click here and that's it. If you position it as here's the book download as part of this download will follow up with a series of seven emails that provide the additional information that wouldn't actually fit into the book and state that up front. That might be a good valid way to overcome the requirements to get people to specifically opt in into the mails that you're going to be sending them. Rather than just assuming that, okay, we now need explicit opt in for everything and we're just not going to do it. Think about ways of structuring it. That means that you are compliant, but also gives the opportunity to send people follow up content in a meaningful way relating to the specific thing that they have opted in for. So including some of these extra additional things in that sequence is a good reason for people to opt in and it's a good reason for you to be able to send them at least seven emails as part of the cycle as part of this specific thing they've opted in for. Rather than just having an open ended we want to send you this and then we want to send you an open ended number of follow ups because it's not around a specific funnel.

Guest: Not that makes sense, but that's great information.

Stuart: Yeah, I think that was the first cost so far.

Guest: That's all right.

Stuart: Excuse me. So where do we actually. We talked about the what to include and the constraints. So as you mentioned, if you are working with us, we'll be able to guide you through quite a lot of this anyway and point out any pitfalls we talked about in the context of how people are receiving it. So think about how they're actually the readers, not just the asset by itself, but think about the readers and how they're dealing with it. We talked about the physical constraints, particularly around dimensions and quality, that type of thing. And really the key thing that we want to get across is get the book out there. It's not worth anything you can do to minimize that path to get it out the door, to make it easier, quicker, faster, cheaper. Because all of these things can be updated and tweaked and added to later. It's really not worth spending thousands of extra dollars or months of extra time adding these things when really you want to wait for specific feedback. And then if you do make the decision to include them, then think about that consistency of images, permissions, the kind of less is more type of approach of not not just turning to a picture book or comic. So yeah, whether you're doing this with us or whether you're doing it by yourself, I think all of those constraints are worthwhile things to things to think about. Absolutely. Excuse me. The other thing I wanted to quickly touch on while we're talking about what to include is kind of. A few people have asked me when we've been on some strategy calls based on some things that I've mentioned in the past, and that's the outlining and how to bring the ideas together to structure the content a little bit. So I just wanted to briefly touch on some of the things that I do because. Well, I mean, because some people have been asking, but hopefully people get value from it. When I'm outlining anything, whether it's one of the books that we do or one of the calls or the training sessions or to a lesser degree, the strategy calls, but anything that I'm kind of thinking ahead, I'm always mind mapping because I find it very easy to kind of graphically lay things out in a kind of graphical but still hierarchical way. I know some people are less into mind maps and are more into traditional outlining, but the tool that I use all the time is one called iThought HD. It's an iPad and Mac app. And the reason I like that particularly it's a mind mapping tool, but it's got keyboard shortcuts for creating child and sibling levels. So as you're typing, if you hit space bar three times, it will put a child in and automatically jump to the next level down. And if you enter or return three times, it will put a sibling in. So the next one on the same level. And that just really quickly enables me to keep typing as I'm kind of thinking about the different levels. Get it all written in, put some structure in it at the first pass, but then kind of grab things with the mouse or on the. Touch them on the iPad and move things around if I want to restructure the order. So for me, that's a super straightforward way of starting off at the kind of table of contents level, at the main questions that we want to answer, the main section headings, and then kind of flushing them out, expanding them down into the sub areas to make sure that each level is talked about. And then when I come to record and create the book in the first, in the. In the actual recording, I can just use the mind map and kind of highlight each of the nodes one at a time and then just make sure that as I'm talking, I'm ticking off the things that I've kind of predefined and know that I want to cover and then go through them. Are you a mind map person or outline person or sketching a notepad person?

Guest: You know, I'm not. I think I probably should be. You know, I'M a messy notebook writer kind of person. No, I'm not. I really should be though.

Stuart: I know. Well, I don't know. It's definitely, I mean, even as people listening to this, I think you know what your preferences are to a certain degree and whether it's kind of sketch noting and doing images and illustrations to take you from one level to the next or whether it's kind of traditional hierarchical outlining, just kind of like a bulleted and sub bulleted list or whether it's mind maps. I think some you kind of gravitate to one or the other even before the tools were around. So going back kind of 10 years, the kind of physical or paper based mind mapping, I would typically do that anyway. So draw a circle in the center of the page and then kind of spread out from there. Although having said that, I guess maybe in the paper sense I tend to use bulleted lists a little bit more. But it gets messy. So I mentioned the ability to do it on a system and as I say for me other systems might do it as well. But I thought the fact that you can just keep typing and it will put the structure in by hitting the triple space or the triple return, that's really the thing that makes it very fast and quick to get it in there and then can play around with it later. I mean you don't need those, you don't need to spend money on things like that. I mean outlining it on paper or in Excel or I know Omni Outliner is. I think it's relatively pricey, but that's a very kind of robust outlining, hierarchical outlining tool as well. I know some people are very keen on. But I think this, particularly when you think about books and as we've talked about before, if you head back to one of the book breakthrough, sorry book blueprint scorecard stages when we were talking about creating meaningful content and that outlining the fact that the title is really the problem statement, it catches their attention, it draws people to it, the subheading amplifies that and then develops thought a little bit more and kind of reinforces it. And then the next thing is really the table of contents. People opening that front cover, looking at the table of contents, seeing the chapter headings that kind of tell a story, going from that problem to a solution. So mind mapping or outlining that start with, start with the title and then going to those chapter headings and then just flushing out the chapter headings into the content that needs to be there to scrape. I think that makes it very easy when you then come back to the call and you've got the opportunity to just go on each node one at a time and just make sure that you are covering all of the bases that you thought about when you were taking some time to sit down and think about what should be included in the outline and then what information is actually needed within that outline to really, really flush it out. Well, so with that, yeah, I think that is a good place to draw a line under it. I was just looking down, talking about the outlining. I was looking down the little list that I jotted down before we jumped on the call. And the one I noticed on there that we didn't particularly cover in terms of what to include were checklists. The reason I want to quickly mention that separately is checklists provide something slightly different to images because they're more interactive. There's the kind of assumption or suggestion with the checklist that someone actually plays long at home and fills it in as they're going. So we've seen two types of checklists come through from people, and I wanted to be judgy, but I'll call them good checklists and bad checklists. And the good ones are exactly that. They're ones where the context is being considered. The place that they set in the chapter is very clearly supporting the information that's just been said. So it might be talking about financial planners. We were talking about financial planners before. So people refinancing mortgages, there's probably seven or eight things that you really need to know before you jump on a call with a mortgage broker or go to Rocket Mortgage or one of the online services. And that's perhaps things like outstanding value of the home, outstanding mortgage, maybe your credit score, how much debt you're carrying, how much, what bills you've got. So those specific things where people can fill in the blanks and feel like they're reinforcing the message that they've just read, or it adds value to them because they can collectively bring this useful information together in one place and then refer back to it at later dates. So sticking with refinance as an example, giving someone a checklist on a page that really gives them the seven or eight things that are going to be super valuable before they jump on a call with any provider. That's a good checklist. It's adding value. Some of the bad checklists that we see are things like slides from a presentation that people have done that have some questions on that, or slightly random questions that don't necessarily tie in completely with the chapter that's just come before it. It's reusing content from elsewhere that isn't kind of entirely contextually relevant or we saw one. I can't think of what it was specifically, but it was where there was a whole host of pretty complicated calculations and really there was an A plus B minus C. Then divide that answer by 23 and pat your head and pick your nose and you'll end up with A. So that type of thing really would be better served with a link out to website with a form that people can just enter the details onto the form and then the number gets spit out for them. Anything that's too complicated like that is very. Not very challenging. But it's not the most useful and most relevant to be in a book. There's plenty of online form providers out there. We use Jotform quite a lot here. But I know there's several others where you could just put a link. You could even put an image to the form to the checklist where people would put those complicated numbers. Maybe jazz it up a little bit. So it looked a little bit. It looked compelling. But have an image to the form and then the big URL to the dedicated landing page below, sort of www.migratecalculation.com and head over there and put in the details and point people in that direction rather than trying to do something too complicated in the book. Just because you're trying to reuse information that lives usefully elsewhere and now you're just trying to dump it into a page because you're not necessarily thinking about the best context for it. So checklists. I just wanted to touch on that before we wrap up because that one is a useful one and it's one where people sometimes fall on the wrong. The bad side then.

Guest: Very good. Yeah.

Stuart: All righty. So I can feel another cough coming on, so let's wrap it up before that one fluttering down the mic as you listen to this show. Notes, as always, head over to 90minutebooks.com podcast and this is going to be episode 62. So dive in there for the show notes and the transcript and listen on again if you've got any questions you want us to address entering on the show. If you want to be a guest, head over to 90books.com and follow the podcast and follow the guest link and we're going to get some guests scheduled in over the summer. Questions, just shoot a note to support and 90 minute books and we'll pick those up. If it's specifically to the podcast let us know and we'll, we'll answer the question there. If you just got a question for us, again, we'll pick those up and reply directly. And as you said, the best thing you can do is just jump on board and get started. As always, if you want our help, just head over to 90minutebooks.com and follow the get started link, and we'll be there to guide you through the process and help you make the right call on including images and more importantly, get your book out there talking to new prospective leads.

Guest: Very good.

Stuart: Okay. So thank you, Betsy. Thank you, everyone that's listening. We will catch you in the next one.

Guest: Always a pleasure. Thanks, Stuart.

Stuart: Okay, take care. Bye.