How to Write Your First Book!

Lance: Welcome, welcome back to the Lance Wallnau Show today. we always have a variety of subjects where literally while I’m working today, I’m from Yom Kippur and the great David Toeman to the end times move of God the political midterms. And then we just punctuate it all,and say you’ve got a story to tell and you got to get your story out. I’m getting my story out here,and you’re kind enough to listen to us along with the 800,000 downloads a month. But you’ve got something you got to say something drew you to this show I’m all about activating people to do what God called them to do. That’s part of that anointing that’s on my life. It may be a little chaotic at times but there’s a way, there’s a method in the madness. People get activated when they’re thrown out into the waves of life and have to swim. And with that thought in mind, Mercedes, thanks for joining us today, but threw her into a podcast. Oh, I don’t know how long. It’s only been a year maybe but you’ve been doing this.

Mercedes: I feel like we’ve been doing the podcast longer than that.

Lance: Longer than than

Mercedes: You’ve been on RAV for a year, but I feel like we’ve been on longer than that. Maybe a year and a half.

Lance: Well, at some point there was an initial moment when you were having to get thrown in behind the microphone.

Mercedes: It may actually be at a year; I have to look it up because you’re right. Around this time, I feel it’s like when we started the podcast, October but it was two years ago but October.

Lance: Yes, I agree because I remember talking to Salem when we first started and I remember then I was negotiating with Sam about whether I wanted to do Salem. And it was like they were impressed with it could be 70,000 downloads.

Mercedes: Totally.

Lance: Now we’re up to 800,000.

Mercedes: On our way to a million.

Lance: On our way to a million.

Mercedes: But with that in mind, please like, share, and subscribe.

Lance: Yup.

Mercedes: Help us reach this goal. Help Lance get to a million down below.

Lance: Can you help me?

Mercedes: We’ve got it.

Lance: Mercedes would tell you, contrary to other people that own businesses. I don’t really look at money. I don’t look at anything. I just look at how many people are liking what we’re doing. Because if we’re blessing you, that’s I care about. It’s like church growth. Pastor wants to know how many people are coming to church on Sunday. He’s got all kinds of CFOs take care of the offering and that stuff. He wants to know are we growing? Are we reaching people? An evangelist wants to know that. With that thought in mind, we have Larry Sparks with us right now. Now, Larry is Mercedes husband. That is coincidental to his be on the show today. Larry does his own thing. Mercedes and he, when I met them as a matter of fact, it was a real clear message to me. I want to get Larry in. Oh look, you’re married. Larry comes with the package. He’s part of the Sparks family. No. My husband and I do not work together. I do what I do and he does what he does. I thought, okay. Well, I’m glad to see that that wall has gone down and now we’re working with both of you.

Mercedes: You tell this random story. I never remember saying that.

Lance: It was something like that.

Mercedes: I think it was from when I used to work in software that we didn’t do the same thing. But now what’s so great about working for you is, there is so much overlap. It’s like Kamala Harris’s love for Venn diagrams. We’re right in the middle now.

Lance: Well with that thought in mind. Let me go right to Larry because Larry is a friend of mine and I enjoy Larry on his own. Like Larry could be on the show frankly by himself anytime. We had done it. We done just Larry and Lance Show.

Larry: We did. Yes.

Lance: And just sat down and talk. Remember that one we did in front of the screen here? Just you and me with an iPhone. Remember that I had this kind of like hypnotizing screensaver going on back there. It’s before we had a set.

Mercedes: It was a cityscape, yeah.

Lance: It was a cityscape. What were we doing?

Mercedes: Look like y’all were in a hotel room right up the back window,

Lance: Something but we were I was doing a broadcast and Larry came over and we’re like, we both were talking about end time stuff. But Larry has an extraordinary publisher and coach for or I asked him, how many books have you helped get over the finish line with these big authors.You guys know who the authors are. He said, about 350 books. My gosh, I’ve done two. It’s like pulling teeth. 350 authors he’s helped from concept to execution. Larry then I asked him I said,well, what do you do now? Because it’s hard to get a hold of you. You got big authors getting after you. Now, how do you help the people that don’t have any, have never written a book?

Larry: Well, one of the things that we’re looking for are people with a message that fits within our niche. So, it’s very interesting because one of the things that happens to me as I’m going around to different places. I mean, I will go into a different ministry and I’ll never forget this. I went into this particular television ministry and the lady who is the receptionist recognized me,knew what I did on the publisher Destiny Image. I’ve done that 10 years. I’ve been in publishing 14 years and this receptionist lady is like, oh, I got a book. I feel like anywhere I go, people when they find out who I am and what I do, that is usually the phrase that they present to me. I’ve got a book. In other words, I’ve got a message inside of me that I need somebody to help me get out.

So, I almost see myself as a midwife of sorts where I work with these different authors whether they’re established authors, people like Bill Johnson. Can I share a story very quickly to give you illustration of what I do? Bill has this in his latest book Open Heavens. I remember listening to Bill’s podcast, because that’s a lot of what I do. I listen to people whether they’re known or not known. I listen to their messages. I listen to what they burn for what they’re passionate about. I was on a walk listening to Bill Johnson’s podcast and he was talking about revival. He’s talking about paying the price for revival and I just felt such a weightiness and an intensity and a passion and a zeal on this message.

I texted Bill while on my walk listen Bill, I know you’ve got like 10 book projects you’re currently working on but I really feel like this is something you need to release. This is a core message for you. Revival is one of the things that you’re known for. You’re known for healing, signs and wonders, the kingdom but revival is something you’re known for and you haven’t done a book on revival. So, I just submit this to you and that whole conversation was the birthing of a book ultimately called Open Heavens which came last year. So, that’s what I do. I listen to a lot of messages. I listen to what comes out of these people. Again, well-known authors or people that we are just looking for. We’re looking them on social media, looking at YouTube, listening for people who have credibility and the right message and then, I work with them and I try to pull that message out of them and develop it into a book.

Lance: How complicated is it? So, Mercedes, we deal with systems. Your job here a lot of times is just to get the trains on track to get them moving. So, he has a methodology that he has that he’s worked with. But have you, what is your role in this? Because I know that you’re involved with this particular, this broadcast. We’re doing because have you helped him to systematize a way of getting this us out like we work with so many thousands of people. Like what have we got? What are you working on?

Mercedes: Yeah. So, basically, what Larry just described is kind of like what he does by day. So,it’s like by day, I’m the publisher for Destiny Images, for all these big authors. But he runs into these issues where we’re first-time authors or people who maybe have an idea for a book, have something maybe written a chapter or two or maybe they have a whole book that’s already done and they just don’t know what’s next. They’re like, do I self-publish, how do I even market this?because as we know whenever you have a product, it’s not just the creation of the product it’s also how do I tell people about it. So, what we wanted to do is I really picked Larry’s brain and there’s crazy fun stories go along with this the creation of this but what we did is we actually just went ahead and built an E–course. Because we got asked so many times that it’s like we really just need to sit down document it, you record videos, I’ll record videos and let’s just allow people if they’re interested in to purchase it.

So, to your point I’m a big systems person and so one model that I really love is the one page, I’m sorry one page business plan. So, I kind of took that idea and I innovated a little bit. So, it’s the one-page publishing plan and that’s what Larry and I made. So, what we do is we quadrant everything off and so it looks, I don’t know if we have it or we’re going to put it in and post. But basically, it looks like a little quadrant, like a document broken up into quadrants and we look at everything from what’s your core message? What why are you doing this? What’s your motivation? Because at the end of the day what’s going to carry you through this writing process? And then also the method of like how are we going to go about writing this book? Then we look at things like marketing and I like I really like it’s I think they’re acronyms right where it’s like a word that then stands for things.

Larry: Yes, like PIE.

Mercedes: Yeah, so I call this one section marketing as easy as pie and we look at what platforms do you have access to? Do you have a website already? Do you have a mailing list? Do you have a podcast? And then we look at influence and so that’s your social media influence and your outreach and then we have endorsements. So, who could you go to right now and get endorsements from like? So, for this that we created, Larry’s got endorsements from Patricia King, from Bill Johnson.

Larry: Robert Henderson.

Mercedes: Robert Henderson.

Larry: Yeah.

Mercedes: So, it’s like this whole creative process that Larry takes larger authors through. We said, you know what? Let’s break this down. Let’s really take a lot of your intellectual property and let’s start helping just average everyday people figure out what’s next. So, that’s what this is and I’m telling you, I mean, not only is there that initial mind map document. But then we go in depth and we have something called the 3-M context strategy. We start helping you build out your chapters what those look like chapter titles are so important.

Larry: And that helps you organize your book right there a lot of people that’s one of the common questions I get is how do I actually successfully lay out my book and it’s right there in the 3-M content strategy.

Lance: Well, let’s slow down because this is where I’m at right now. Because Mercedes is after me to write a book and she’s like merciless Larry. You have no idea what it is, whatever you do.When she wants you to do something, she’ll get you to do it.

Larry: Lance, I appreciate it because that’s the thing that pulls me to actually get things done. Otherwise, my personality propensity is be like, that’s a good idea, but actually we partner together and she’s the one who really puts legs to the concepts that are rolling around in my brain but you’re talking about a book that you need to do.

Lance: Yeah, and you’re saying the chapter headings is part of the secret of getting it out of you.

Larry: Yes, it is.

Lance: Talk to me about that.

Larry: Well, I would say this, is that in that particular document that you have there, we take people through each chapter and here’s the deal. Like sometimes people just want to share all their content informationally and just bombard you with all this data. You need to actually title each chapter in a way that’s going to communicate value and overarching benefit to the end reader. I tell people this, when they’re actually looking for a book on the shelf and even when they’re flipping through it, you know what they’re looking for? They’re not looking for information, they’re looking for solutions. People when they’re looking at Walmart, Barnes and Noble, Amazon. They are shopping for specific solutions. I would encourage you and I’d encourage anybody as you’re laying out your book. Be mindful in each chapter title, in the subsections. Figure out, okay, what solution is this chapter and what solution is this particular subsection of the chapter going to give the end reader. Because again, we have a lot of books about intimacy with God, identity, figuring out who are, even books that are a little bit more theological like, how to learn about the prophetic.

Well, that’s great information but how do you actually make that relevant? How do you aim at the end user and say, this is how this particular message and this is how even this particular chapter is going to benefit, enhance, and take your life to the next level?

Lance: Mercedes?

Mercedes: Yeah, I want to add to that because we know this, you write copy with me a lot but at the end of the day, no matter what you’re selling, people are buying that because solving a problem for them. Doesn’t matter what it is. You go buy a razor at the store, you got to shave.  You go get food, you’re hungry. Like why, if someone is going to spend money because your product or your course is solving a problem for them. This course solves a problem for somebody. Leviathan that we sell solves a problem. It’s a spiritual twisting of words and meanings and so, no matter just keep it in mind, no matter what you’re selling solves a problem. So, we take an approach in book writing, we’re is that problem solution format.

So, the beginning of the book we explain you know hey here’s what the problem is. You’re going to take your time to outline. Then you’re going to sit there and you’re going to kind of like poke at that problem. You’re going to irritate it a little bit more. But then the rest of the book, those chapters should be solutions to whatever the overarching problem is. So, in our case, it’s like the corruption of culture and it’s falling apart around us and we’ve lost influence of society and the church is not nearly as event as it needs to be. I mean, so you outline a problem but then like in your case for 7-Mountains that becomes a solution. So, we start outlining seven mountains. We start outlining sheep and goat nations.

So, we take a problem solution format and writing a book. And then at the end it’s really like hey here’s the full summary of what we just learned. And it’s true for anything. So, that’s what this this focuses on. The other thing I would say for chapters another really interesting thing is that you could also formulate your chapters that if you be a speaker. Segment out your chapters into topics. So, so chapter two could be all on, like this would work for you Lance for 7-Mountains. Chapter three might be sheep and goat nations. Chapter four might be, hey, you can’t take seven mountains until you learn to take the mountain of me and you understand who you are and how God‘s designed you, what your calling is. So, that way you take one of those chapters and it’s like, hey, well, what could you speak on Mercedes if you want to come speak at our conference? I was like, oh well, I have all these. I could at any of these topics, right.

Larry: They become your keynotes.

Mercedes: Yeah. They become your keynotes.

Larry: And that’s exactly what I did for the book Pentecostal Fire. I have every one of those chapters formatted in such a way to where if a church invites me, I have a handful of messages ready to go.

Lance: Here’s another little golden nugget. I talked to Stephen Covey’s marketing team. I had a meeting with them and they said, what they did to make Seven Habits of Highly Effective People and books like that massive best sellers is they took the keynotes and broke them down into 15-minute micro segments for YouTube. So, they put 15-minute segments up on a key chapter subject that had an illustration and then tied it into the book and promoted the book at the end of the 15-minute YouTube segment. So, this thing is like, wow, and like the Mormons are brilliant at market. I’ll tell you how to do business. I think they’re even behind the chosen, aren’t they?

Mercedes: Well, that.

Lance: Or how are they involved with the children?

Mercedes: The marketing.

Lance: The marketing guy. That’s the point. The marketing. The marketing. Not the theology obviously.

Mercedes: Yeah.

Lance: So, okay. So, lest we lose our focus here. I want to say something flat out. Many of you are going, well, I don’t know. I want to write a book. Let me tell you something. I read something once about why do you want to write a book? Why? And here’s what they said and they probably weren’t a Christian. Every now and then you talk to someone who’s honest and not a Christian,because they’ll say what Christians need to hear. For instance, you need to write a book, because it’s so impressive when you get to introduce yourself to people as an author or when they read about your profile on LinkedIn or Facebook and it says, author. And because the way best-selling categories are on Amazon, you have 5 subdivisions of political on Amazon for instance. So, I actually was a best-selling author on Amazon on the subject of politics. I was the number one guy when my book came out. So, you say, best-selling author. Wow. Never heard of you before but there’s must be a lot of best-selling authors out there. So, listen to me.

Now, by the way, when you sell over 1 hundred thousand, you can legitimately probably call yourself this. So, I’ve done that. Less Rolling Stone. Here’s my interview right now and tries to attack me. Anyway, but the point that I want to make is best-selling author is great. It’s great to say author. It’s great to put it on your profile on your business card, but it’s also important for your family. Because for many of you, the legacy of what you have to say, the insights that you’ve got. Well, who wants to hear me? Well, your family. There’s something about your children, your grandchildren. Maybe not even your kids, your grandchildren, grabbing that book and realizing here’s a book about us, our family, our legacy, who we are, what we believe, the DNA of the family tree. Do it for your family’s sake. Do it for your legacy’s sake. Do it for the prestige of being an author.

Larry is the best coach you can have. You see how comfortable it is to work with. You’ve actually broken down the 7,8,9 processes from marketing to laying it out to getting clear as to who your audience is. But Larry how many, you do this in videos, is it digital, can we look at this? Because I want to tell people right now how to get a hold of this.

Larry: Absolutely, it’s 17 videos. They’re pretty short, actually 10 to 15 minutes each. We wanted to make it bite size and manageable and also, we have all the documents available the PDFs, because here’s the goal. I want people to go to Those easy-to-watch videos and then be able to fill this one-page publishing plan out. Because when they do, it’s going to do two things. It’ll help them organize their book to be very effective if they’re going to self-publish. But if they want to publish with somebody like me, I wanted to figure out, okay, I want to give a resource to any person who wants to write. And if they fill this out with the information I train and coach and mentor them on, this kind of book proposal, this kind of information will get the attention of a publisher.

Lance: 17 video sessions that are all recorded, but now you say they’re bite size. It’s a one-page publishing plan. So, it’s all coherent broken down to those categories. Four printable publishing plans which means you got templates.

Mercedes: Yeah, those are the documents. Those are some of the documents that started going through.

Lance: So, like the chapter heading stuff and this and then the marketing plan.

Mercedes: Yeah, because they go together so that you watch the video session then you do the activity.

Lance: And you got transcripts for all sessions.

Mercedes: Yeah.

Lance: Courses include written versions of all of a sudden. So, if somebody doesn’t listen to it, they can also read it.

Larry: Correct.

Lance: Alright. Let’s come on back to us now. The person is going to get this. How do they get it delivered? Is it digital?

Larry: Digital.

Lance: Is it a box or it comes in on the mail?

Mercedes: It’s digital. So, it’s like a learning management course. So, you would buy, you get access to it immediately. What I do want to focus on too is that not only are they the bite-size videos. We go in-depth into marketing. We go in depth into self-publishing versus going with her traditional publisher. We look at certain really the publishing industry the way that Larry’s explained it to me is certain publishers specialize in particular books.

Larry: Yeah.

Mercedes: So, that’s something else Larry runs into, where it’s like I have an idea for this book and it’s like well, you know what? That doesn’t necessarily fall into the destiny image genre. But we have a sister company, or you might do really well at this other publisher and actually at times we refer out. So, that’s what’s really cool about what Larry was just talking about is that he’s going to give you the ins and outs and another template that says, if you copy this template and you give it to a publisher, this is what somebody like myself is looking for. I want to see it organized like this and hand it to me.

Larry: Because invariably, Lance, I do these types of things. I’ll do seminars. I’ll do one-day publishing type of writing activities and immediately, I’ll have a whole barrage of people come up to me at the end and say, well, Destiny Image publish my book. And the reality is this, we have a very specific niche that we publish. We publish charismatic, revival, prophetic, supernatural. We’ve been around 30+ years. But what I do encourage people to do is figure out, do some research, research the different publishing houses that are out there and look and see what kind of content they are successful with. Because that might be the publishing partner you’re looking for and I actually train people in these videos how to be aware of what publishing people out there publish are looking for. And how to fill out this document in a sense so that they will be prepared to deliver a winning book proposal that any publisher would be impressed by.

Mercedes: But we do talk quite a bit about self-publishing, because you and I did that for your last two books. So, we do talk about that process. And to be totally transparent that it’s if you have a built-in list like you have, it’s going to be more economically beneficial for you to self-publish. If you’ve got an online following, if you’ve an email list. I think that that’s something that you should seriously look at. There’re resources that that go along with that of how do you or how do I take my book and then take a word document and turn it in laid out so it looks like a book. How do I come up with the cover? I mean we talk about all of that like the resources of places you could go to have that done. So, either side that you’re on because it’s beneficial for different people for different reasons.

Larry: Yes.

Mercedes: If you are getting started, you don’t have a built-in list. Maybe a publisher is the right way go for you. But ultimately at the end of the day more and more, I would just encourage everybody more and more you need to start building an online following. Lance knows this, but one of the most probably impactful messages that I got from my last CEO when it comes to a business is this statement that says, “The most important asset your business has is your list. The second most important asset your business has is the relationship to that list”. So, if you’re wanting to do anything publicly it’s so important to start build Building a list, building an online following. I had somebody tell me Jeff McFarland told me. He’s like, I wish I would’ve focused on building an online following before I ran for congress. So, I thought it was interesting feedback too that if you would all want to be an influencer, you need to be building a marketing list.

Lance: And finding those influencers is also a part of the marketing thing. People are clearly,they go to influence people do it to me all the time. They want to get me to have them on the show or do something like that, and do that because that helps. Building your list and then having people that are influencers that’ll introduce you to their list. So, Larry, let’s talk about this. We have, how long does it take to go to the course?

Larry: It takes, I would say about 10 hours in total. So, there’s 17 sessions. There’s some bonus material as well.

Mercedes: Yeah, but that’s if you just watched it succinctly.

Larry: Yes.

Mercedes: I think that the process itself will take you at least 2-to-3 weeks to correct do all of this. Because again it’s watch the video and then go and do the homework. It’s like okay watch the video.

Lance: Let me tell you something. I flushed about $50 to $100,000 down the toilet on trying to have a coach that was going to walk me through publishing and it was a waste of money and a waste of time. This is the reason why I’ve got Larry on, because I don’t want any of you to ever waste money and time on what you don’t need to waste money and time on. So, compare that to way you guys are doing this for. What’s the cost for this in in terms of you’re going to be publishing a book within 30 days? You do this and within one month, you got your book out there and how much is this?

Mercedes: Well, it’s not $15,000. That’s for sure. So, rest assured it is not that. Normally, Larry and I will sell this course for $497. We are decided to do just a special deal for you guys Lance for our guys really. So, we’re going to do $197, is the sale price. So, I don’t know how long we’re going to leave that up, probably just for like 7 days, maybe 14 days depending on the type of feedback we get. Because we can’t do that forever, but for now for the next at least 7 days I’m going to leave it at $197.

Lance: Okay. So, it’s $197 and it’s starting today. We’ll have 7 days that’ll be available. Trust me that’s I’m telling you. I put thousand, when I say 100 grands, I’m not kidding. It was painful.

Mercedes: And Lance you know what? I’m willing to do a money-back guarantee. If this doesn’t meet your expectations, if this doesn’t help you, get your book strategy together and clarify things for you. I’m not going to promise you’re going to have a book in 30 days because that depends on the person.

Lance: Yeah, right. You got to listen to it and have and besides that, remember, like I said, do it because you want to be able to say you’re an author. Do it so that you have something as a legacy for your family of what you’ve done. Do it because your whole is about whatever God taught you and that has to be put into the message. I heard Kenneth Coleman talk the other day. He went to Oral Robert’s office and Oral Roberts threw the Bible at him and he and he caught it and he grabbed it. He was holding it. He said, ‘What is that?’ He goes, ‘What are you looking at? What is that? It’s letters. Kenneth, the New Testament is all letters.’ Kenneth is staring. What are you talking about? He goes, ‘Write letters to your people and think about not getting money. Think about what they need and get it over to the by the spirit.’

Larry: Wow.

Lance: He said, ‘You’ll have all the money you’ll ever need. This is a book of letters.’ So, you think about it, man. The whole, our movement is based on writers that wrote something. Mm hmm. That’s our DNA. That’s the tribe. So, get a hold of this. Where do they go to get it by the way?

Mercedes: They can go to “Lancewallnau.com/publishing” and that’s the easiest URL we came up with. So, “Lancewallnau.com/publishing”.

Lance: I like that. “Lancewallnau.com/publishing”.

Mercedes: Would you agree with this statement? This is random but based off your thought there and what I said earlier. Do you think most of the epistles were written to solve problems? Like I think in the Corinthian church and it’s like guys get it together.

Lance: Oh yeah. They were written to solve problems and in fact first Corinthians and second Corinthians were fundraising letters. Because it’s Paul’s instructions about the offering that was to be taken before he got there so that he wasn’t embarrassed when he brought friends with him and they didn’t have their act together.

Mercedes: Wow.

Lance: That’s and then while he’s talking about the fundraising he says, now about the gifts and about the angels and about my experience in heaven and he’s filling in every else. But it was fundraising letters.

Mercedes: Even Acts is to document what had happened in the early church. Who was, it was going to King?

Lance: Almost excellent Theophilus.

Mercedes: Theophilus, yeah and it’s like, hey, there’s a problem here. Write this down. I’m saying most everything we do, why we do it is to solve a problem. I think it’s just fascinating. Anyways.

Lance: Larry, 350 authors. You’ve got expertise. Thank you for putting your expertise into a form that within 17, 10 to 15 modules. It’s like Bill Johnson’s personal author partner is working with you to get your story out there. And your family needs it, your friends need it. And who knows how many best sellers are going to be launched right now. Go to “Lancewallnau.com/publishing” and take action now while the ideas in your heart. I want to thank you so much for being with us. You are the audience you’re the reason why we do what we do and we love you and we look forward to seeing you again on our next show.

Closing: Did you enjoy this latest episode? Please remember to share it with your friends.Because the more knowledge you have, the better equipped you are to navigate the world.