How (and Why) I Wrote a Short Book

I want to share the process of how I wrote my first education book.

I didn't sit down one morning with an epiphany to write it—it was more of process that slowly came together over several months.

Back in 2022, I was writing a weekly personal finance newsletter for freelancers & creatives. There would be a new article, Q&A, and Breadhead* sketch every week.

I learned what resonated with my audience and what they had the most questions about. Also, in meeting with clients and reading people's social media posts (and being a freelancer myself), I had a deep understanding of what went into managing money as a freelancer.

At the time, I didn't have a great way to get new subscribers to the newsletter. The content itself was the only value prop.

So I wanted to create an asset for my target audience that I thought would be a no-brainer to download if they came across it.

And this is what I eventually came up with:

A complete, easy-to-read guide to managing money as a freelancer.

But writing 10+ chapters and figuring out the best way to put it all together felt overwhelming.

And I knew I would struggle to write the book on top of the newsletter content each week. So after outlining the different topics I wanted to cover, I started thinking about what needed to be written about each.

Since I'd already been writing for a couple of years, I started with a decent amount of content and started plugging it into the first draft of the book.

Then I figured out what was missing, and started writing articles to fill the gaps.

By writing about the chapter topics as articles first, I could get my thoughts out there for the book while still being able to keep up with the newsletter.

I wrote about things like tax deductions & how they work, different retirement accounts, LLC vs sole prop, managing cash flow—and then slowly added them into the book where it made sense.

After several months, the only thing left to do was sit down, put it all together, and edit the existing writing so it flowed together in the context of a book.

How I Put it Together

Like most things, I used Canva to design the pages & graphics:

This was more time-consuming than expected, but it was worth it. Each page is intentional and there are visuals, curated resources, checklists, and more to make it as engaging as possible.

And based on feedback from some readers, I think it turned out pretty well:

How I Launched It

Launches are your best chance to get the most subscribers at once.

It's hard to create continuous excitement but when you finish something & share it with the world for the first time, people want to support you.

Use this to your advantage and make it as easy as possible for them to do so:

After the initial post, throughout the morning I posted the different chapters with a graphic of the key highlights (and shared my work by posting previews & graphics from inside):

To help with distribution, I tagged everyone I included in the book as recommended freelancers to follow:

That one tweet got 7 replies and 11 likes—and every time someone replied to it, it brought my post into their audiences feed, expanding the reach of the original post promoting the book.

This was the result of day one promotion:

After you create the asset, the only thing left to do is get it out there.

Regularly sharing on social media, putting on your website, sharing with others in your niche—and I plan to buy a few niche ads to market the book over the next few months & will share the results here when I have them.