Updated! Now includes an audio version!
Click the cover to see the book on Amazon (affiliate link)
The subtitle of this book is: The Paint-by-Numbers System to Write the Book of Your Dreams—FAST! Gratifyingly, it does exactly what it says on the tin. The next time I write a book, WYBIAF is going to be open right there on my Kindle for easy reference.
Before going any further, I need to make one thing clear: this is not one of those books which tell you can write faster by paying someone else to do it, That's not writing, it's outsourcing. Obviously, if you want to write your life story and don't think writing is your thing, then go ahead and hire a ghostwriter, as long as you're happy to fool potential readers that you're the author. But WYBIAF is for people who do want to write their own book, but wish to do so quickly, and then market it effectively.
What I like about the book is that, as its name suggests, it is extremely practical. You don't have to understand the steps (although they are simple enough), you just have to do them.
As if this were not enough, the author has also made a number of worksheets available in pdf form to accompany the book. Taken as a whole, they form, in effect, a workbook to accompany this manual.
The single piece of advice I liked the most was to write a very, very detailed outline before you start the writing proper. I can vouch from experience of writing long articles for magazines that doing this causes the work to virtually write itself.
There are a couple of things I take issue with. One is the section on finding your ideal client. Lots of people recommend this, but I have a nagging doubt about it: does describing your ideal client in detail blind you to possible other clients?
More seriously, Janal provides advice about quoting from other works, citing the principle of Fair Use. One has to be careful here, though, because the term Fair Use is defined differently in the USA and the UK. Therefore, if you wish to quote a few lines of text from other authors, check what the law is in your country.
Otherwise, this is an excellent guide to producing a book quickly.
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