Well I got the first copies of the physical book from the printers! Check it out!

Hahahahaha….I couldn’t stop laughing that this book actually exists :-)

The front cover is actually a subtle ode to my favorite copywriter: Gary Halbert….you can see his book was clearly the inspiration *COUGH*exact copy*COUGH* for my book:

The image I used on the cover was a cheeky nod to the show Family Guy….where Brian Griffin’s novel has this cheesy oil painting of him looking very profound:

You can see the similarities here:

I printed out 3 copies of the book through Lulu.com just to see how the formatting would come out, and it came out better than expected!

There ARE a bunch of very small changes I want to make (like page breaks and spelling errors).   That’s to be expected since this was written in two weeks.

If you really want this you can buy it here…

…..and I will laugh my ASS off if someone actually buys it!  I priced it at $14.92…

….because that’s when “Columbus sailed the ocean blue” :-)

But this kind of concluded my totally-useless-goal of “Having a book with my name and picture on it”!

CHECK!

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UPDATE 9-22-2011
————————————–

Someone actually bought the book!  That means my book sold ONE more copy that Brian Griffin’s novel :-)

You can see all chapters collected on my desktop:

Honestly it wasn’t THHAAAT hard, it’s just that I have lots of other stuff going on at the same time (who doesn’t), so I think I’m a day or two behind.

Who cares.

Time to move on.

The next agenda-item is to write the Index for the book.  This shouldn’t be too hard since it’s ONLY SEVEN CHAPTERS :-)

The next step might take a bit of extra work though.  I noticed a lot of the pictures in the book are weird sizes…and I might have to go back and re-edit a lot of them so they’re visible to the readers.

I’m also not entirely sure about how the pictures will affect the page spacing (I think Lulu.com has some cool tools to fix that problem).

Anywhozit….we’re a few days behind schedule, but it’s been two weeks and I HAVE indeed written a book (even though it’s just on my computer for now)!

I’m done with 4 chapters (and will be writing the 5th one today).

Just a quick update…..I appreciate all the emails I’ve been getting about this :-)

As for those of you “who just can never seem to get around to writing my book”

…..maybe you’re just a big lazy-ass ;-)

This chapter was all about the Selling Notes Experiment.

I’ve noticed I have NOT been copy/pasting these experiments into book format.  In fact, pretty much 90% of each is completely re-written.

This is a little more work than I anticipated, but it will make a much better book than just lazily copy/pasting blog posts!

“Writing Chapter 1″

I decided chapter 1 of the book will be based off this experiment I did in April 2005:

http://www.nevblog.com/bottled-water-experiment/

I’m in Houston visiting my family for the weekend….so I planted myself on the living room couch for about 2 1/2 hours and re-wrote the experiment out.

6 more chapters to go!

Finding out what format to write in (PDF or Word) to get it printed correctly.

Once again, I’m pretty lazy, so I just asked a friend who’s already written a book and self-published it and had a good experience.

He used a service called OffTheBookShelf.com.

He used them instead of others because they’re kind of a one-stop shop.  So if I upload my “7 Ways I Made Money” book (or whatever I end up calling it)…..I’ll get from them:

• An ISBN number for the book.
• Their “distribution engine” automatically puts the book up for sale on Amazon, Barnes & Nobles, Kindle and a bunch of other online book stores.
• You can order PHYSICAL copies of the book from them.
• You can order DIGITAL copies of the book from them.
• They’ll convert your .DOC digital version of the book into a .PDF (good, because I’m not writing a whole book in PDF!)

SO I just have to write the book in .doc format…..however I wanted to run a quick test to see how a sample conversion would go (I don’t wanna have to re-format the whole thing after the conversion).;

I copied a blog post into Word (from this post) and then converted it to PDF from a free online conversion tool:

http://www.freepdfconvert.com/

….to see what would happen:

….the conversion went perfectly!

So today’s question has been answered:

The entire book will be written in Microsoft Word.

The writing begins tomorrow!

“Start putting Facebook ads out like 4HWW style to split test names (optional step)”

This was an optional step…and I’m NOT going to split test what title is better because:

1.) I’m lazy <—-probably the main reason.
-and-
2.) I don’t care if the title is for this experiment because I don’t care about selling any copies of this book.

So this means I get a day off from this experiment…woohoO!  #nohomework

….if you don’t count the Homeless Experiment that I posted on Amazon.

Every journey starts with a single step (or some crap like that….) so here goes:

The first step is coming up with a title or concept for the book. I already know the book will be based off experiments on this blog….and most of those experiments are based somehow on money.

I also know the book will have 7 chapters (I only have time to write one chapter a day for about a week).

So the book will be a short collection of 7 different ways I’ve made money.  I originally wanted to keep the book somewhat “Timeless” …..but this would eliminate any mention of internet businesses I’ve created.

The possible experiments to include in the book are:

• Bottled water experiment
• ….also Part 2 of the water experiment
• Selling my college class notes
• Confiscated stuff from airport
• Curb painting curbs
• Making and Selling a Facebook fan site
• Scratch Lottery experiment
• Begged for money in the Homeless Experiment
• Started HouseOfRave.com
• Started and sold a palm reading business
• Selling Product photos
• Bonus Chapter: How to get a good job…. fast

I’ll pick 7 of those and run with it.

I presume the “point” of the book will be to “expand the mind” of someone looking to make extra money.  Often people are stuck at “Get a job”…..and have no other ideas.  I think this will open people’s minds to business ideas…..much like my Behind The Scenes product opened people’s minds to the fact starting an online business is NOT as complicated as one thinks.

Here’s a Title-Brainstorm:

• 7 weird ways I made money through college <–I like the best
• 7 ways I made money without a job
• 7 stupid ways I’ve made money
• 7 ways a college student made money
• 7 rather odd ways I made side-income
• 7 ways I made side-income without whoring myself out
• I didn’t want a job so I did this instead to make money
• 7 random ways I made money without having a job

DAY ONE: Got the title and concept of the book down!  Tomorrow’s step is to figure out what format everything needs to be in to get it printed.

I have no idea why, but I feel like I can write, format, publish and print a PHYSICAL book for NevBlog within 2 weeks.

Correction, it’s not going to be a full-fledged book….I think it’ll be more of a glorified pamphlet.

I want to see how fast I can make a book out of my blog and get it in-hand printed.

So today I am officially kicking off the “Write a Book In 2 Weeks Experiment”!

I already know the end goal, so here’s what I need to do in the next 14 days:

1. Come up with concept/title ideas.
2. Start putting Facebook ads out like 4HWW style to split test names (optional step).
3. Find out what format to write in (PDF or Word) to get it printed correctly.
4. Write Chapter 1
5. Write Chapter 2
6. Write Chapter 3
7. Write Chapter 4
8. Write Chapter 5
9. Write Chapter 6
10. Write Chapter 7
11. Write index
12. Formatting and editing
13. Agree on title from Facebook ads click-through-rates
14. Create book cover - Upload to service for printing like OffTheBookShelf.com or LuLu.com.  Apply for ISBN number.

That’s the rough plan.

Now I’ll soooorrt of be cheating, because each chapter I’m going to write has already been written.  Essentially I’ll be making each chapter out of a blog post.

For example, I might write about the Facebook fan site I made a while back and then sold for a small sum.  That whole saga was already done and documented:

http://www.nevblog.com/facebook-profile-website/

http://www.nevblog.com/why-facebook-sued-me/

http://www.nevblog.com/selling-facebookprofile-com/

…..so one chapter might consist of that story.  It’s already been done, but it’ll still require a lot of formatting and re-doing the photos for the book version.

But if I keep up the one-chapter a day pace I’ll have some extra time to do all the other miscellaneous things that might come up (I’m saving a whole day for formatting errors…..there’s ALWAYS formatting errors).

Anywhoozle, I’ll be starting this tomorrow.  First step will be to come up with the subject of the bamphlet (book / pamphelt).

Random title and subject brainstorms (based off blog posts I already have done):

• 7 weird ways I made money through college
• 7 ways I made money without a job
• 7 stupid ways I’ve made money

Other suggestions are welcome!