Keep it simple

"Foreign."

Stuart: Welcome back to another episode of the book More Show. It's Stuart Bell here with Betsy Vaughan. Betsy, how's it going?

Guest: Very good. Happy July.

Stuart: I know, it's crazy, right? We were away for a couple of days for July 4th and it's, it really doesn't seem that long since Christmas, you know what. Which means it's not that long to the next.

Guest: Somebody posted on social media six months until Christmas. It was, you know, it was till Christmas Eve. So it was June 24th and I thought that was just the most insane thing ever.

Stuart: Start counting down the back of the year. It's in the uk there's not really a big holiday in the middle of the year kind of yet a couple of public holidays in May, but there isn't anything else kind of. There isn't as much of a flagpole planted as July 4th over here. So this summer kind of it's the solstice in the middle of June that kind of stands out a little bit as the longest day. And then summer vacations for schools typically don't start until they've probably got another week or two in school. So you don't tend to get. Until summer vacation starts. You tend to get that big flagpole. So it's almost like Christmas is jumps on you a little bit because you don't tend to notice till September, which in a way I think is better because at least you get to enjoy the summer without thinking about the winter coming around.

Guest: Right. It's kind of nice to have a little holiday though in the summer. You know, kind of a little break. Not, not a Fourth of July on a Wednesday. I mean that just kind of messes up everything. You know though I was kind of excited yesterday because it was like, there

Stuart: was almost like a weekend Thursday, it

Guest: was Monday, but it's Thursday. And I was like, oh gosh. And then it was like a two day work week. It was really messes with your head,

Stuart: you know, so confusing.

Guest: Yeah.

Stuart: Well, there might be some people out there who took the holiday time to write something on their book. So let's talk about. We were going to talk about some keep it simple things based on a couple of the questions that we've had recently. So let's dive into that.

Guest: Let's do it.

Stuart: Okay. So the thing that spurred off this call, someone was shot as a note asking for an indesign version of their book that we've done with them. There was someone else a couple of weeks ago now I think he was talking about, we were doing something on the COVID and we were talking about making some changes there. So I thought it was a good opportunity to look at that kind of keep it simple methodology that we've got around the whole process. And we talk about quite a lot, but we don't necessarily talk about the details of. Not so much how we can do it. But if you listen to this and looking to do it yourself, just some pointers for keeping it as straightforward as possible. I mean, obviously the simplest thing you can do is get us to do it. Get us to do it for you. But without kind of being too obvious on that, let's go through the individual steps of it and look at some of the ways of. Even if it's not so much keeping it simple, it's not getting drawn into complexity, which as we've said many times before is complexity is really the thing that kills it and slows it all down and means that just as we were saying, it will be Christmas before we know it. And worst case scenarios, you won't be finished with the book.

Guest: Right, Exactly. Okay, keep it simple.

Stuart: Yeah, let's look at the two steps or the two main elements. So we've got the interior and the COVID So everything that we're talking about is really modeling our own process. There are various other ways of getting the book out there, printed, published. You could go down the route of using local printer and binder to get it done. You could print it at home in the office. In theory you can bind it yourself, but all of those things are more problematic or slow down the whole process. So we typically talk about CreateSpace as being the printer. They're a print on demand service. You can print one copy or a thousand copies. It plugs straight into Amazon because CreateSpace is owned by Amazon. So it makes it very easy. Fill in a couple of fields, push a button and then you can make the book available on Amazon. Amazon does all of the fulfillment, so every stage, it's as straightforward as possible. Now, as we've said before, you might have a different set of priorities or you might be looking for something slightly different. If you're looking to sell the book as the product, as a thing in which you're making money, there might be cheaper alternatives, but really we're talking about getting the book out there as a lead generation tool to start a conversation, collect name and address details that we've talked about many times in the past to lead that conversation towards being able to help people and, and eventually do business with them. So that's the setup we're going to really be talking about CreateSpace as the printer and the ways to keep it simple using those guys.

Guest: Okay.

Stuart: What I didn't do to keep the podcast simple was get a drink before I started. So I've got a feeling my voice is going to give out because it's already going a little bit. So apologies if it starts getting a little bit croaky. Where do you want to start? The inside or outside?

Guest: Let's start inside.

Stuart: Okay. That's probably easier because there's fewer moving parts and it's more straightforward to get going. So the key thing about the interior is getting the layout accurate for the print file. So each printer will have its own requirements on the dimensions of the pages and the margins on left or right, depending on how it's being bound. But with all of the services, you'll get a document or a web page that will talk about exactly what those requirements are. And then it's just a case of making sure that you're using the correct template or the correct layout so that the file that you create is of the right dimension so it gets printed and the pages are the right way around and there's enough space on the edge of them for the margins and the cuts and the bleeds and all that type of thing. So with CreateSpace, they'll provide some word document templates that are predefined and preset up with the right margins. So the most straightforward way is to Google around for creative space templates, pull down the one size to the right proportions. And by size we're really talking about the page size. So there's many different page formats you can select from. From the 5 by 8, which is the typical book that we produce through bigger sizes. If you've got more content, it's usually an IDE to step up to perhaps 6 by 9 as a standard size. Because what we're typically saying to people is that the finished product, the finished physical product, in this sense, you really want it a size that people believe that they can get through in a plane flight. So we typically talk about a kind of north to south plane flight from Florida to New York, that two and a half hours flight. By the time you've got up, eaten some peanuts, had a drink before you need to start descending again, you've probably got about 90 minutes or so to. To consume some media on the flight, whether it's you want people to read your book or whether they're watching a movie, typically around 90 minutes or so. So a book that ends up between somewhere between kind of 35 and 55 pages is pretty much the right size to be able to consume and understand and get the message and read the call to action at the back and start thinking about what the action steps are to do now so that when people land and, and get some time, they can follow through on that next action step. So the page dimensions 8x5 or 6x9, as two examples, you might need to manipulate the content, manipulate the size of the document so that you've got about the right number of pages. If you've got a lot of words and you want to still keep that page back count, go to the bigger size. If you've got fewer words but you still want it to give the impression of a, of a book that's worthwhile reading, go to the smaller sizes. Does that make sense, trying to hit that balance? Yeah, yeah. Because really particularly around, I mean, it's obviously less of an issue on a physical book because you don't get the same, there isn't the same physical dimensions. But trying to orchestrate it so that the physical element ticks all the boxes and gives people the impression that it's both worthwhile reading but also easy to read. You've got a bit of flexibility on, or a couple of options to pick whatever is the right choice.

Guest: Yeah, I think people have, we have this conversation and you can hear people when I'm speaking to people who are coming on board, they're like kind of ruffling things on their desk, reaching for a book, you know, to measure the size. You know, they're always kind of, oh, okay, I guess you're right. In their mind they're thinking five by eight, that's small. You know, it's a perfect size to throw in a, in your laptop bag or your handbag or whatever, you know. Yeah, the easy read and, and, and like six by nine can get a little bit bigger. And people sometimes will challenge me, you know, on oh no, I need a 6.9 or bigger, I need a bigger book. You know, like they're wanting that. But I'm saying with you're going to have a thin book that's not going to, you know, it's not going to give the substance that you want. You know, it's not going to give that presence.

Stuart: And if the objective is still met with a smaller book, then why not go, why not save that extra effort, save that extra cost as we've described before, for a version update to the book later on for a second book looking at a second, a second niche, a second funnel, a section A second call to action. Bigger isn't always better. What you're really looking for is the objective and that kind of minimum effective dose that. Who? Tim Ferriss, Sorry. That idea of the minimum effective dose in the 24 Hour Chef, it's. You can go over the top, but anything above the effective dose is effectively wasted. Anything below it isn't effective. So therefore you do need to do a little bit more. Anything above it is effort that could be better spent. Spent elsewhere.

Guest: Yeah, absolutely.

Stuart: 8x5 size. I mean if anyone's got a physical copy of the 90 minute book or one of the other ones that we've created that 8x5 size, you do typically see 8 and a half by 5 and a half is a very standard size on books. So this is on the smaller side. We recommend going on the slightly smaller side of that. Not only for the pocketability and the feel that you can actually get it created, but it's surprising the difference that it has on the page count. Just going up that extra page will drop the page count by maybe 10 to 15 pages. And that's more detrimental than a slightly smaller trim size. So keeping it simple, as you're sat listening to this, thinking about what you're creating, think about what the, what the benefit of one versus the other is. Don't just go with six by nine because that's what you think. Actually think about the consequences of it and what the benefit of that is versus the downside, which is the need to create all of that additional stuff. So in the interest of keep it simple, definitely the default is 8x5 and a vary from there. If you happen to have something that has more content, rather than thinking I've got to hit this arbitrary target of getting enough content to fill a six by nine book because of such and such a reason, because that reason probably doesn't exist. Yeah, so that's trim size. So trim size. All of the publishers, all of the printing services will give you the dimensions they'll typically give it as a Word document. Because Word is the de facto Office document rather than Google Docs or Open Office or one of the others. Even pages. We sometimes run into an issue where people are trying to push things through as pages. There's not to say that you can't do all of those things. It's just then an additional manual step of needing to set up the right page dimensions, the right templates. So it's not worth that effort. Microsoft Word these days, it always was historically a paid product, but they now have a free tier in the Office365, it might only be, as I'm talking about now, it might only be the free tier, might only be applicable on the iPad app. So you might need, if you don't have a paid version of it, you might need to do a little bit of digging around and it might be quite as simple to get the, to get a free version of it. There might be some other constraints, but it's much more accessible now than it was before. If you don't have access to Word, then you're going to be in a situation where in Google Docs or in Pages, you're trying to find a way of, of recreating those page margins. Again, it's not rocket science. All that you need to think about is the fact that in the physical book, facing pages so odd number pages 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, etc. Will need to be shifted off to the right. I'm just thinking about getting this the right way around. It'll need to shift it off to the right hand side because the margin is on the left and the opposite is true for the even pages, the back facing pages, the margin there is on the left hand side. So again, all of these system, all of these tools have a way of setting that up. It's just how simple you want to keep it. Some people, particularly if you look in online forums or around publishing groups or around organizations that are happy to charge more money, then some people will talk about InDesign as a layout tool. I forget the name of the other ones because we don't use them. I'm blanking on the name of the other one. But anyway, InDesign is the Adobe version of it, very popular and that is kind of like a desktop publishing package. It will allow you to kind of character by character, tweak all the format and the layout. It's great if you're doing things like magazine or newspaper layouts where you've got columns, Word and Pages and Google Docs. I'm not sure about Google Docs, Word and Pages at least can do columns, but it starts getting a little bit fiddly, particularly when it goes over page breaks. InDesign is great for doing that complicated, complex layout, but thinking about keeping it simple, and this was really one of the conversations that triggered the thought for this episode is that level of complexity is unnecessary. So the thing that you need to create at the end of the day is a PDF that will go to, with the correct margins, that will go to CreateSpace or Lightning Source or one of the other Printing companies, that PDF can be created in anything, as long as it's a standard PDF with embedded fonts, which typically is. If you create it, then what your. What you sent them, it doesn't matter the tool in which it was created. So rather than going down the complex route of buying and learning and knowing InDesign or finding someone externally who can do that for you, which is possibly going to be more expensive, and then stick to the Word document because you're just talking about a body of text, paragraphs of text. You're not talking about typically not talking about columns or strange layouts or spinning things around or having them face the other way. It's just text. So by far the most straightforward way of doing that is just in a Word document and then converting the Word document to a PDF. Make sense so far?

Guest: It's making sense so far, yes.

Stuart: So I think the other element that kind of ties into that is actually finished that thought. So I started talking about the. If you go on to forms or communities of designers or publishers, they're talking about tools like that because in some circumstances they're doing more complicated things and in other circumstances, there's a little bit of. There must be a term for this, but I can't think what it is, that kind of ingrained thinking of a particular industry. If an industry starts thinking of a particular tool in a particular way as the kind of bare minimum, this is the tool you need to be in our business, it kind of. No one ever questions that. Again, it becomes the. The law of that community where in order to do this properly in air quotes, you need to use an InDesign, which is completely not the case at all. It's perfectly adequate to use Word and create a PDF document from there. So again, don't get. It's like if you ever talk to mechanics, mechanics have got opinions on which vehicle you should and shouldn't buy and they could talk to you for an hour on the pros and cons of each. But at the end of the day, pretty much every single vehicle out there, particularly these days, will get you from A to B. It's just that kind of insiders industry. Oh, yeah. Oh, no, I'd never do that. Oh, you don't want to do that. That type of, that type of thought around it.

Guest: I think sometimes people like to throw around their knowledge, you know, you know, like, oh, this is what I know. And so they just. It kind of becomes a. You know, sometimes we amongst us go, okay, I know it's something that you use and Sometimes a certain client, you can kind of feel that with them there's a sense of like, oh, you don't use that. Or why don't you use that? There's that sense of like, you know, oh, well, that's what I use. You know, just.

Stuart: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. It's a badge of. A badge of honor. If you've kind of mastered this complex thing, Right. You want to be shouting about it as much as possible separate from the actual kind of validating the use case. Is it actually really necessary for this? Well, no, probably not. The. That's a good point because it ties into as well the thought that we have when we're helping people to do the outline of their book and not get too tied into the. The industry speak, the industry thinking, or the corporate speak of your own subject because you know it so well. A, never underestimate the simple steps because the person that you're talking to is way earlier in the journey. And. And B, be very careful of getting sucked into industry language or exclusive exclusionary language.

Guest: And that's very hard sometimes, you know, I mean, when you're, when you're in it every day and you're speaking it every day, and it, it can get. It can get very hard, you know, but it's nice when it's nice. People may not know this, but I read every book that leaves our office. And so sometimes when I'm reading certain books, you know, it, I, obviously I've picked up a lot of the language. Let's say we're talking about the financial stuff and they're using certain terms, and at some point you're thinking, I'm thinking to myself, well, you know, if you're just a common person who's never dealt with anything in the financial industry, you don't know what this is, you know, and it's always something that makes me think about that. So when you, when people break it down, and I want to say, you know, dummy time. But keeping it simple. Yeah, you know, but keeping it simple. You know, I always think it's so much, you know, there's a benefit to the reader, you know, and I think it's. It doesn't cloud the person's, you know, reading it. They're really able to kind of read through it and understand it and keeping it simple. There's, there's a whole. There's a positive there. You know, people really get to it and understand it and, and maybe, you know, aren't intimidated by some of the

Stuart: lingo, you know, that's exactly right. And I think it's the same. We talk a few times about tying it back into. If you were talking to someone face to face at a party, if you felt talked down to or belittled or, or felt like someone else was just using big words to try and demonstrate how clever they are, none of that is a compelling factor or element to the conversation. It's not that they. Or it's very rare that people will turn around and say, wow, that guy was using some really big complicated sounding terms. I'm very impressed by that. I want to learn more. 99% of the time is that, oh, that guy was being a bit of a. Bit of a. Well, I'm trying to give a word that will keep the clean tag. Yeah, sure enough. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, showboat. Because there is a way of sharing knowledge and positioning it at the level of the reader. And that might be very complicated because you might be writing a book for that, that audience, but make sure that you're considering it and not just defaulting back to insiders, insider language. But there is a way of doing it in a way that kind of leads them towards, leads them towards understanding how much you know and how much you can help them by positioning it at their level at the moment and then moving in parallel with them as they're, as they're becoming more educated or understanding things more. It's, it's a bit of a fine line and it's very easy to people fill people's fall on the wrong side of it. I think the flip side of it as well, particularly around. If you look in jumping back to the, jumping back to the point in hand and using InDesign and tools like that. If you're on a forum where people are trying to justify their own services saying, oh, well, it's absolutely essential that you need all of this because they're trying to justify their own costs or their own, their own budget. It's very different again from just saying, okay, well what do I need? And go from that direction rather than, oh, well, you should have this. Because it then justifies the, the ends. Justifies the means type thing. Yeah, okay, so that's, that's tool. So there are the options. So Word. We do everything in Word. The majority of our clients are corporate clients. Word is still the de facto corporate tool for getting words on a page. It's more than adequate for the job that we need to create the interiors of the book. It makes it accessible for as we're working with other people because then they can make edits and do updates and then they don't need to run off and find additional resources. It will be very problematic and exclusionary. And we'd almost be tying people forcing people to work with us in the future, which we want people to work with us in the future because we're great, not because they haven't got a choice. So if we did everything in indesign, it would be very problematic for other people to make changes. It wouldn't be simple, it wouldn't be straightforward, it would be a challenge. So Word is The de facto one. Check into the online versions of Word. Microsoft Office 365 if you don't currently have Word, if you are needing to use Pages or Google Docs, then the thing that you really need to look at is the margin. The page breaks on the left and right. Just make sure that the margin set up and the page dimension is correct. And lastly, just remember that a lot of the printing services, particularly CreateSpace, will provide templates for you definitely in Word, but will provide templates that you can use. And it's just a case of typing the words on the page in the way that you want them to look. The other simple thing on there or the other reminder to keep it simple on the layout is not necessarily the tool as such, but just the complexity of what you're trying to stick on the page. So we talked a couple of shows ago about what to include, kind of the layout elements, what to include and what not to include. So I don't want to harp on about that again. I'll stick a link in the show notes back to that episode. I think it was either. I think it was episode 62. It's called Images in your book. So that we talked about some elements to include and what to include. The only thing to add to it here in terms of keeping it simple is that simple is very relative to your own skill level. If you're a power user in Word and you can manipulate stuff and you're very comfortable with sections, I'm very comfortable with headers and footers and breaking things in the correct place, then adding some visual elements to it and moving like we do, we move the chapter headings partway down the page so the chapters more visually break on the page. The page numbering, we keep it very simple and straightforward, but we start the page numbering from the actual content, not just from the very first page. So little things like that help the visual experience, but it very much depends on your own level of comfort. Again, jumping back to the beginning, ask us to do it for you. And then that's super straightforward. You don't need any knowledge. But if you are doing this yourself, want to make this useful for people who are listening and trying to get this completed themselves, I would say don't worry about it and just start from as long as it's consistent, it doesn't really matter whether something's included or excluded. Typically you would have page numbers just on the content pages, not on the kind of the. The intro and outro type pages. But if you can only create a document that's got page numbers on every page, then that's fine. Stick with that. It's not going to significantly move the needle or slow the boat down from getting to have a conversation with people. Likewise with headers and footers, if you want to put your name in the top of it, I mean, you can do. It's not really going to make the boat go any faster. It's not going to compel someone to take an action step with you because you've got your name on the top of every other page. But if you want to do that and it's comfortable enough, you're comfortable enough with headers in order to do it, and you can get them on the right page in the right position and you really want to do it and it makes you feel good, then crack on. But on the converse, if you can't do that, it's really not going to make any negative. There's going to be no negative impact to that at all. So don't worry about it too much. Visual elements in the book, kind of like underlining chapter headings, having pages always start on the facing page rather than a back page. Little symbols like visual logos or icons in there, all of these things. If you're super comfortable with it and it will take you virtually no additional time to do it, then by all means have at it and crack on. If you can't, don't worry about it. It's not going to slow the boat down at all. It's not going to negatively. It's going to have absolute minimum negative impact on whether the person takes the next step. Because it's the words that are important. So don't waste any effort on trying to do it. The one thing that I will say is be consistent. So if you are going to do it, make sure that it's consistent all the way through the book and looks exactly the same. If you aren't going to do it, don't let one of them end up in a stray place. In terms of keeping it simple. Don't worry about it unless you can do it without worrying about it. And if you do do it, be consistent.

Guest: Yeah, I mean, we go through that when we. When, you know, those. There's times something might get missed in layout. And somebody. When I look at it, maybe there's stars. Somebody wants double stars at the beginning of every chapter or every other chapter or every three chapters. And there's no rhyme or reason. So I always have to question it. Like, all right, let's either have every chapter or let's do. Let's just keep it. You know, keep it. Keep it simple. But also keeping it simple to me is not clout. Not. Not junking.

Stuart: Yeah, like cluttering up the. Yeah, cluttering up the page, particularly, I think, with headers and footers and adding all of the things at the. At the top. So some people will. Or it's pretty common to see, or it's not uncommon, I guess, to see the name of the book or the name of the chapter up in the. The header at the top of the page, on the facing page and then the back page have the person's name. But really, when you think about it, how does that help the reader? We're talking about books where the chapters are relatively short anyway. Because you want to stick to the point and then move on to the next point. Yeah, it doesn't help anyone. Apart from. Well, it doesn't help anyone by having your name plastered all over the top of it. It's not like people are going to forget who you are. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And to a certain degree, even if they do forget who you are, then who cares? It's like Dean's kind of in the realtor space. When we could compare doing a. Get a listings campaign where you send out postcards to a neighborhood that doesn't really talk about you as the realtor, apart from having the contact details on there. So comparing that campaign with a typical thing that you see, like you'll see a realtor's face and Jenny Jones getting it done, or Jenny Jones get sold and their face plastered all over a bus seat or a billboard, we'll often use the phrase, do you want to be rich or famous? Because you can spend a lot of money on ineffective things, or you can focus on things that aren't necessarily going to include your name, but actually gets to the next step, gets the job of work of the device, gets it done. It moves people on to the next stage. So I know, I mean, it really junks up the page and it doesn't add anything to the process. Given that the process is trying to get people to take the step that's listed in the call to action on the back.

Guest: Exactly. And I'm more of a. I tend to keep things cleaner and neater and you know, that's with the exception of my desk. But I just like a very clean look and, you know, very simple. And so, yeah, when I start seeing things like that, little icons and you know, if it doesn't have. Even if it has to do with your brand, it still doesn't. It doesn't. That's not. It doesn't need to be there, you know. So, yeah, we try to discourage it on our end, you know.

Stuart: Yeah, it's definitely. Unless it's. Unless it's moving the job forward. Unless it has a purpose, then.

Guest: Right.

Stuart: Probably better not to do it.

Guest: Yeah.

Stuart: Just on that consistency topic, I don't think we talked about it in the last show, but a couple of the catches that we get as we look through it doing that final check are things like spacing around the paragraph, not having extra spaces where you've hit kind of the return key and you haven't particularly noticed. Make sure that the style is the same on each of the paragraphs so there's not extra spacing or slightly different font is crept in. Bullets and numbering and the kind of indents that you have on each of those, make sure all of those things are consistent. Again, if you think about doing this yourself in Word, make sure you turn on the non printing characters button so that you can actually see what's behind the spaces so it doesn't just look like spacing. You can also turn on page borders, page outlines and table outlines and view the printing area so all of the invisible things that actually make up the page become visible with kind of the outline dots so you can actually see what's going on rather than just trusting that, oh, there's some space there, I'm sure it's fine. All of these little things are to some degree power things in Word. The simpler you keep it, the fewer of those things you have to worry about because you're just dealing with text.

Guest: Right.

Stuart: Okay. So that's probably good for the interior. At the end of the day, you just need the PDF creating. If you can't create a PDF from whatever document you've got, Word Pages and Excel, Excel, Word Pages and Google Docs all have export to PDF function on them, particularly on Mac os. I'm not so sure about Windows, but particularly on Mac os? They do. And so that's no problem at all. If you're really struggling and you've got a document that you absolutely can't convert to PDF, then there's a couple of online PDF tools. One's called iLove. I think it's called ilovepdf.com typically I don't use that, but I'm sure I've referred people to that in the past. Super straightforward. Another one's called Cloud Converts. That one we do use quite a lot. Not for this particular thing, but we use it to convert other files. So those are two ways of converting the doc that you've got into a PDF. So the COVID then the exterior. The key thing there again is sizing and bleed. So this is starting to get a little bit more complicated. It's a little bit more difficult to get a cover file, depending on how you're setting it up. So, again, this ties back to what we were talking about, Word. If you're very comfortable in some design tools without making it any more complicated, you've got the opportunity to do more stuff. If you're not comfortable but you still want to do it yourself, then keep it as straightforward as possible. And that will mean that some of the complexities don't need to come into play. So dimensions. The publishers, or the printers, rather, again, will give you the dimensions that they need. That's typically the size of the file, the size of the book, so eight by five, plus an amount of space for the spine. So depending on the number of pages you've got, the size of the dimensions of the spine will change slightly. Plus they'll want a little bit of bleed area over the edge. I'm not actually technically using the right terms here, but points coming across. It's actually the trim area, sorry, over the edge, so that when their machine's cutting it, if there's a little bit of variation on the machine, it's not going to be the end of the world. So in terms of keeping it simple, having a solid color background on the front and back, so obviously white is the easiest because that's just no color. So having a solid color on the background and then having text well within the kind of the edge areas of the page is the most straightforward, because then you don't need to worry so much about the trim size and things like that, because if the trim is a little bit off, you're only dealing with a white background anyway. Some people have a full image on the front. The thing to keep in mind there is make the Image. Make sure that the image is bigger than you need. Because of this trim issue and the bleed issue, the printers need a bit of space around the edge. So don't get an image that's just perfectly 8x5 because that's not going to be big enough for what you actually need. Each printer will typically have a calculation that they'll give you in order to calculate the spine. So it will say the number of pages multiplied by a certain depth. Page depth. And yeah, the page number is multiplied by the number that they're giving you through the page depth will give you the spine. And then you've got the back cover as well. Again, typically, most of them will want just a single image that's got the front, back and spine altogether, although some of them ask for them separately. And then really it's just a case of keeping it straightforward. A solid color background takes away some of those edges. Some of those issues having the name of the book, the subheading, the author name on the front, a single image. Nice and straightforward. There's a tool obviously we've got in house design, and so they use in Photoshop or Illustrator or whatever design tool is the most relevant. But if you're trying to do this at home, there's an online image editor called Canva A C A N V A, which is very good. They won't specifically have the dimensions that you need, but you can enter in custom dimensions and then move margins around and things like that. So that's a very useful tool. And they've got a lot of templates. Again, not specifically book templates, but templates where you can insert images and different fonts. And for most people, I think if you don't have a designer or design skills, then that's probably a good place to start. The back. We've talked at length about what should be on the back cover before in terms of keeping it simple in the design. The only additional thing you need to remember is there is a kind of a reserved area somewhere on the back cover, typically the bottom right for the barcode. So make sure you don't put anything in that because it will get overwritten. But the other thing is then just to think about the page dimensions, think about the size of the fonts and just think about the back cover being legible. Don't make it. Don't try and squeeze too much stuff in there. At the end of the day, you're not going to convince anyone to do anything just by trying to jam more words on the back. What you really want to do is give them the simple steps to kind of finish the thought that they had when they picked up the book in the first place or requested the book in the first place. So again, don't get carried away trying to convince people with more words. And the last point on the back cover is just think about the difference in the back cover text as far as we're talking about or the job of work that we're talking about. So that's encouraging people to take the next step versus the job of work of the back cover text on a traditional fiction book where the job of the back cover is to give a kind of a tease or a testimonial in order to get you to buy the book in the first place. So that's typically not what we're talking about here. We're not talking about writing text on the back to talk about how good the book is. We're talking about writing text on the back that gives people the next step so they can continue their journey. So again, don't over complicate it by trying to chuck too much stuff on there. The layout of the books and the fact that the barcodes on the bottom typically means that there is space for either a company logo or your image to go on the bottom, depending on which way around you want to do it. You can squeeze both in there. But again, like Betsy was saying before, it starts to get a little bit jammed in. Sometimes the risk of trying to squeeze too much in there and it looks complicated and then it detracts from the main call to action. But the thing to really remember is just keep it simple. If you don't have design skills, if you don't want, if you want to do it yourself, then Canva is a great tool. If you're not working with us to do your book, but you really need someone to do the COVID then there are services like 99designs that will do cover, that will do kind of bespoke cover jobs. People can bid for the various. You basically put a tender out there and then people bid for the work. Obviously the most straightforward way of doing it all is just to work with us and then we'll take care of everything for you. So in the. Keep it the simplest, then it's. It's jump on board with us.

Guest: Exactly.

Stuart: That was another long bit of talking. Did that, did that cover bit make sense? I think, I think those are the main bits to keep it simple. I don't think we missed anything there.

Guest: No, I don't think we did. I think you're talking about the back cover and how, you know, people. People tend to get a little wordy. But you know, I was just kind of scrolling through some of our covers in our gallery and when I look at our covers and again, if readers have our listeners happen to go to our gallery, remember that our authors have signed off on these designs. And so just remember that.

Stuart: Trying to suggest there's no accounting for taste.

Guest: Right. So, you know, sometimes they can get a little wordy, you know, as well. But when you look at them, some of the ones that are just very simple, you know, there's a title, there's a simple subtitle, some may not even have an image on them. They're one single color, you know, or one single image. Those are the ones that really in my. That I tend, I'm drawn to, you know, first and just very, very simple. It not all the glitz, not all the glam, not all the images and all the stuff coming at you,

Stuart: I

Guest: tend to just kind of go right over all that, you know, all the words and.

Stuart: Yeah, and again, it's going back to that.

Guest: Maybe there's some.

Stuart: I don't know. Well, I think there is some personal preference in it to be sure. I think it is easy for people to think that more is more and they've got. This is like the one opportunity to stuff in as much as possible. But like for example, the difference between. I'm trying to think of some examples but like Walmart versus the Apple Store, the kind of less is more layout of the Apple Store versus the slightly pilot cram as much in there as a floor space as possible. In Walmart you really get the difference not just in terms of the position but the clarity of message. So Walmart is slightly overwhelming because there isn't a single message in there. When you go through this door, it's very unclear what you're supposed to do next because there are so many different options. The Apple Store, it's relatively. And again not one to compare everything to Apple because that's a pet peeve. But a store where there is a single purpose. There is a Tesla dealership in or showroom in a mall was in the other day. And again that's very straightforward. There's a couple of people greeting very close to the beginning of the store. There's then two demo models of a Model 3 and a Model S. And then behind that there's then a counter desktop type place where there's more information. So that is very obvious what I do. I speak to this person first, just to get the lay of the land and probably they'll collect details. Then I get to touch and feel the thing is very experiential. And then after that we start going into the details. It's not like at the beginning of the store, there's all of the fact sheets on the models and talking about usage costs and how you need to have a power station installed in home. The details don't come first. It's the easing through the next step. And the same with the COVID The whole purpose of the COVID is to get people to stop for a second as they're scrolling past the rest of their online life and say, this is a thought I was having, this is a problem that I had. Here's something that is providing a solution in a straightforward way, a minimum viable commitment way to take the next step. The COVID is that next step. It's all it needs to do is get them to take that next step. The back cover is then exactly the same. It assumes that people have already requested it because they've already raised their hand. So therefore they've already got that problem. They're already looking for a solution. They've already read some or all of the content. So they're at the point now that they want to take the next step, they want to be led by the hand to the next thing to do. So the back cover copy, its single purpose is to, in a minimum viable commitment way, take people, allow people, present people with the opportunity to take that next step. Nothing more, nothing less, nothing distracting, nothing new. Just take that next step.

Guest: All right. Yeah, there you go. Keep it simple.

Stuart: Okay? Yeah, exactly. Keep it simple. So let's draw a line under it there. Save some more for the next show. The simplest way, as we've said, is to work with us. So if you are listening to this and anything was overwhelming or you just want it done for you, then head over to 90minutebooks.com and follow the get started links to be taken through that process. Go into all of the details of the actual program itself and how to get started. If you want to read the show notes, scroll back through the transcript of the call and pick up on any of the particular things. If you are doing this yourself and don't want us to do it for you, then there's a couple of specific pointers we've put in this show so you can scroll back through and listen again to those. So that's going to be@90minutebooks.com podcast and then take a look at the transcript for the particular things. And lastly, probably if you want to be a guest on the show and we can go through your own book Blueprint scorecard to see which of the elements you've got in hand, you're well versed and you've got that advanced mindset thinking or which ones you need some help with. So be a guest on the show and we can run through your scorecard and just head over to 90minutebooks.com guest and then there's some fill out a form in there. Then we'll be in touch to get a show recorded. I did mention then the book Blueprint scorecard. So if you haven't done yours and you're interested in the eight mindsets that really lead to the most effective lead generation book, then head over to bookblueprintscore.com and you can complete an online scorecard yourself and measure yourself against those eight mindsets and really get a strong feeling for which ones you're excelling in. Which ones there's, there's room for improvement.

Guest: Awesome. Very good.

Stuart: Okay, so anything, Anything I've forgotten?

Guest: Yeah, I think we got it.

Stuart: Perfect. Well, in that case, it is a hot Friday here in Philadelphia. I'm going to turn the air conditioning back on because I shut it off while we were recording and go and get a drink and looking forward to speaking to everyone in the next one.

Guest: Very good. Pleasure.

Stuart: Thanks, guys. Thanks, Betsy. Catch you later.

Guest: Take care.

Stuart: Of.