How to write a book without writing word
Darrell Backen JG Wisdom
Copyright © 2022 Darrell Backen All rights reserved. ISBN: ISBN-13:
DEDICATION
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DARRELL BACKEN
CONTENTS
Acknowledgm i ents 1
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Darrell Backen:
Good morning. How are you doing?
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JG Wisdom:
I'm excellent. How are you today, Darrell Backen?
Darrell Backen:
I'm doing well. We can start with the questions now. You just ask me the question and I'll explain my answers to you.
JG Wisdom:
Fantastic.
What
is
conversational content creation? Darrell Backen:
Exactly what we're doing now. It's a system that I developed over the years. I find that it's the easiest way to get content is in a conversation just like everybody has a telephone call, everybody can use it, a two year
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old can use it. And I set up a system that records the call and then that's the basis of creating our content for books and other things. So it's just my system that I developed over the years instead of writing. JG Wisdom:
Excellent. Thank you. How do you write a book without typing?
Darrell Backen:
Exactly this method, we're creating... We're going to transfer audio into tech by a system that is there through a couple of apps and it then is a benefit that it's very easy to
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create and it's something that people do very naturally. It is not easy to write a book to sit there and stare at the pages. I've done all that. So this is part of a learning curve of 25 years. JG Wisdom:
Excellent. Thank you, Darrell. My third question for you is, if you don't type a book, how do you get the book written?
Darrell Backen:
Okay. Once I've got the audio file, I submit it to Rev.com and... Associated with this, I'll give you a little app that shows all the places that I use, but Rev.com, they take your voice
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audio file and they do with 9 9 . 9 % a c c u r a c y. T h e y transcribe it for you. And I've done books that are 850 pages using that method it was perfect. JG Wisdom:
Wow. What is the concept of conversational style writing?
Darrell Backen:
Traditional writing people think of... Okay. My first book I wrote, I did it the old fashioned way. I bought myself at that time, this is 1992. There was no computers yet. There was no word process yet the best I could get was an electric type
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writer with no... There was no file. So when I wrote those pages, couple hundred pages of type written manuscript, that was it. There was no edit because I couldn't edit it. There was no way to edit it except retype the whole damn thing. I did not retype the whole damn thing. And I actually had a great benefit as that the girl that I knew in Los Angeles, her father was a writer like a professional writer wrote for Bob Holtz movies and stuff. He looked at me, he says, "Yes, you've got a
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good thing. You do it in a conversational style." Darrell Backen:
"Oh, okay." I didn't know what it was called, but that's what it was. Because I'm looking and I'm talking to the computer, even though it didn't listen at that time. But I was up there, 1:00 AM in the morning just typing what I thought. And all I was doing was telling information that I already knew on how to do marketing for your business. But it was the same as asking somebody "Do you know, directions to the bus
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station?" They would tell you directions to the bus station. And that would be simple. That's all I was doing was telling people anything that I already knew. So I wasn't creating any pros or great literary masterpiece. I was just telling directions and that's how I do it. JG Wisdom:
That's excellent. How does it compare to other forms of writing?
Darrell Backen:
Extremely time consuming and aggravating and people... If you're writing a book, that's a
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traditional book, like an author and it's a novel or a novel [inaudible 00:04:30] and all those fancy little words for not really a novel. The story is that it's a lot of work. They got to edit it, they got to re-edit it. And they do all these things and because they're appearing to be a work of art. This is not a work of art this is transferring information. This is like, if you look at any of the major... The people that I would buy and I have bought books from are from like Tony Robbins and Brian Tracy, because I wanted
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to learn what they knew. I didn't care if they wrote a book that was a bestseller on... They were bestsellers, but they're not people that read it for entertainment. They're people who buy it to learn. That's what I do. JG Wisdom:
Oh, that's excellent. What is the method that you use to record the conversation?
Darrell Backen:
As we're doing right now. I do it on my iPhone with an app called TapeACall. And it's something you buy a yearly subscription. I think it's $10 or
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$15 a year. It's very simple. And you do unlimited TapeACall so that's why they make it. And from that, I transfer that audio file to Rev.com and that's the... I ended up with a... They send me back a PDF that has the entire script in there. And then I modify that script to be sent to the publishers. JG Wisdom:
Excellent. Thank you, Darrell. What devices do you use to facilitate this process?
Darrell Backen:
I have learned over the years and I've gone through a lot of learning curves here. What I use
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now is it's a tool that the truckers use that's called a BlueParrot and it's a headset that is noise canceling and you wear over your head you can wear it for hours and hours. I work from home now I gave up my office, all that and stuff. And I walk around the house, I go to the backyard. I'm now walking through the house and you have no difference with the quality of the sound and you can now... You don't have to sit at a desk anymore the desktop life is over with. I can open the door I've now gone into my
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backyard and all of this you may be able to hear the dogs barking and kids you probably don't. There's dogs barking here and kids, but you don't hear it because it's noise canceling. JG Wisdom:
[inaudible 00:07:18]
Darrell Backen:
That's the difference. Now that's a very important tool, I use Apple and I tend to keep them for a long time. My first I started with the 3 and then the 4, the 5 and I had that for years now, I got a 12 Pro only because my 5, the battery started to explode on it there. So
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I still kept it. Never get rid of your old equipment because it's still good as a... I don't use it for a telephone anymore, but it still takes pictures and I can do recordings on it and stuff. So it's still very good it works on wifi. JG Wisdom:
Excellent. Thank you. Darrell. Next question, what is the latest development in technology for publishing a book?
Darrell Backen:
Well, that's the big secret and it took me 30 years. 30 years I wrote my first book and I thought, "Oh, I'm going to write a book." So I wrote that 200
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pages and then I learned the big learning curve back in 1992, 30 years ago now, there was no self-publishing at that time. You had to submit a manuscript and have it and then they had to see if it was worthwhile. If it isn't worthwhile, then they expect you to pay for to get it done. AndJG Wisdom:
[inaudible 00:08:43]
Darrell Backen:
I know people who have printed 20, 30,000 books and went bankrupt because of it. Basically they've lost everything because they made
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all this and people have printed all kinds of books and put them in their basement and all these other things and there's a big thing that I learned. And here's where I say the most valuable thing is when people share their knowledge, a girl that I've never met, but I used to work with their company and she had said she wrote a book and I said, "Okay, how did you publish it?" Darrell Backen:
Because I knew I had a manuscript in my basement for the last 30 years while at that time it was 20 years. Or I used
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CreateSpace. Amazon owns it and they don't charge you. So I did and I put my original book there and I actually have it in my hand now, How to Make $1,500 A Day In A Part Time Business, I wrote that 30 years ago and then How to Have Fun P r o m o t i n g Yo u r S m a l l Business. And then I wrote a new book, Innovations in Marketing, that was 855 pages, all the things I'd learned in my life. Darrell Backen:
Now the idea of the interview came from this book because I
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was on the radio a few times and I submitted the audio files of that radio interview to Rev.com and they sent me the script. So it was the script of my radio interview. And that was several hundred pages to my book. But again, I was invited on the radio because I had knowledge in my field and then I kept the audio transcript and it became a book and there we go. The... I mean many, many years ago that was on the air for like an hour and then it's long gone, but the book lasts forever.
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JG Wisdom:
Oh.
Darrell Backen:
So, that's... The differences are, you can now have digital publishing that their Amazon has a place and that's how they started. They started selling books way back in 1985. It feels... They weren't invented yet when I first wrote my first book-
JG Wisdom:
[inaudible 00:11:11]
Darrell Backen:
Amazing.
JG Wisdom:
Amazing indeed. Excellent. Now, how does that compare to how you wrote your first book?
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Darrell Backen:
Well, as I was saying, my first book, I bought an electric typewriter and I sat there for hours and hours every night writing it and it took about three months of writing. And it was not a quick, easy thing. And this conversational content development is so easy compared to what I did. A ny bo d y can d o th is , if anybody who can talk on a phone can create a book.
JG Wisdom:
Oh, that's fascinating. That's fascinating. Excellent. Next
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question for you Darrell, what is self-publishing? Darrell Backen:
Self-publishing is the concept of... remember I'd said that if they think it's a great book and they're going to make millions of dollars off you, then they'll publish it for you.
JG Wisdom:
Yeah.
Darrell Backen:
If they don't think it's a great book, you pay for them to publish it That was the old ways. But now there's digital systems and everything's a digital process now. Amazon
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owns a company called... It used to be CreateSpace and they changed the name to KD... Kindle Direct Publishing something like that. JG Wisdom:
Yeah.
Darrell Backen:
And the story is that you submit the file to them. They publish the book for you. They don't charge you for it. It's free to do it. They charge you per print and that's how they make their money.
JG Wisdom:
Excellent. Excellent. Great. Next question then for you,
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Darrell. How do you use TapeACall on iPhone to record your interviews? Darrell Backen:
Well, just like we're doing right now, I use that system. I'm talking through the headset right now and we're talking via the telephone and what I've learned over the years, I've got thousands of dollars of expensive audio equipment. I've got equalizers, I've got a TASCAM recording studio, all that stuff sits in the basement doing nothing because you don't need it anymore. This system
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replaced everything. I've got the fancy mics and I used to work on a speaker phone and it doesn't... You don't need it all. This replaces everything and it's like $15 a year. Instead of the thousands that I paid... $2,000 back in 1992 for a TASCAM Portastudio. JG Wisdom:
Wow.
Darrell Backen:
You don't need that stuff anymore.
JG Wisdom:
Incredible. Next question Darrell, how is the content
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developed by an interview over the phone? Darrell Backen:
Well, similarly to what we're doing now, because this will be created to a book. I'm going to write a book with this because you and I had talked about, you wanted to learn and I says, "Well, if I'm going to teach you... If I'm going to tell you, I might as well tell everybody."
JG Wisdom:
[inaudible 00:14:31]
Darrell Backen:
So we decided to do this and it's better to show somebody than it is to talk about it. Can you see
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the benefit of what I'm doing today? JG Wisdom:
Yes, indeed.
Darrell Backen:
Because now you will be able to look, here's the secret of any learning curve. You have to go over the things that you can... Now it'll be a digital track that you can look at. "I didn't get that part." Rewind it a minute and learn it again. That's what... I've taught courses and I've taught people and I've taught classes. When I was teaching digital marketing, it goes over most people's heads. It took me
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decades to learn it. They're not going to learn it in an hour. They usually said, "Well, can you just do it for me?" "Okay." So I just did it for them. They didn't want to learn how to do it, just do it for me. I don't want to know how to build a car I want to get in and drive it. That's it. JG Wisdom:
Excellent. Thank you, Darrell. Next question. What have you learned over the years for improvements in recording interviews?
Darrell Backen:
Well, like I'd mentioned is that taking over... Just make things
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as simple as possible. And you do not want to have... Complicating things. That's when I learned... This has been a 25 year learning curve. I share with people, all the things I've learned. Most importantly, I share with people, the things that didn't workJG Wisdom:
[inaudible 00:16:07]
Darrell Backen:
Don't do the same things again.
JG Wisdom:
Of course, of course. Next question, Darrell, how do you submit an audio file to Rev.com to get it the script?
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Darrell Backen:
Very simply it'll come into... It converts it into a Mp4 [inaudible 00:16:29]... I don't know those [inaudible 00:16:30] but it does it automatically. You send it by email to Rev.com. You set up an account and it has a thing, download your file. It comes off your computer and it goes there. They measure how many words it is and they give you a pricing. And you say, "Fine, buy it." And it's done.
JG Wisdom:
Wow, incredible. It sounds so easy.
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Darrell Backen:
It is. Well, it's not easy to learn how to do it. That's why I'm doing this.
JG Wisdom:
Of course, of course. Next question Darrell, what are show and tell videos?
Darrell Backen:
That's what I created this idea because my background for the last 25 years has been in digital marketing. And when I went to a company, I said, "For you to convey to your customer, we should use video. Show and tell them, don't just... Like a long drawn out thing and even a website and stuff. There's
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nothing more powerful than a video." And when I'd say that, if I show... If you talk about a piece of equipment, people within 10 seconds their mind's going off the page. They don't grasp it. Darrell Backen:
Now there's one customer that I did a major campaigns for. And they had a huge machine that was truck and it went through the wilderness and it dug holes and did it was called a hydrovac. Doesn't make much sense to people. But when I show the machine in motion,
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they instantly see it... You'd see it go through the [inaudible 00:18:11] and show where it goes through the middle of nowhere there's no roads and it solves their problem. Instantly within five seconds, they got it and they buy it and that's itJG Wisdom:
[inaudible 00:18:24]
Darrell Backen:
Make it simple for people to... They can see and understand things in just a one or two minutes.
JG Wisdom:
Fantastic. Do you need to edit your book?
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Darrell Backen:
I never edit anything. The reason is it's a conversation. Nobody goes back and edits, "Well, I didn't mean to say that. Actually I didn't, I spelt that word wrong." You're talking it. You never have to edit anything. You can review the script of what they send to you and see if there's something that is obvious because they have actual people sitting there. I pay for the ones that it's not a machine. It's a person translating it... Transcribing it, I guess is what it's called. Now I'm old, I always wanted to have
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a Dictaphone back in the '70s. I thought those executives sat there and they said, "Yeah, secretary take this note and blah, blah, blah." That's a reality now it's everybody has a Dictaphone and a secretary, but they never meet them. There we go. Some people remember a Dictaphone. They were an expensive gadget for people in the '70s. JG Wisdom:
Wow. Excellent. So do you need an editor?
Darrell Backen:
No.
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JG Wisdom:
Wow.
Darrell Backen:
I don't believe in an editor because an editor does not know... If you're writing a book and you're looking to be this famous author sort of thing. Author is a word that people who write books. "Yes. I'm a bestselling author and stuff." The story is that they're trying to create a work of art. My books are not a work of art, they're translating my knowledge to the next person. And that's what this is for. And it won't work if you're writing a
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book that is going to be a... A book that is a steaming novel or something this isn't for that. Yeah. JG Wisdom:
Okay. Right. Excellent. Now, who do you get to publish your book?
Darrell Backen:
I use a... It was called CreateSpace owned by Amazon. Now they've changed the name to Kindle Direct Publishing and it's called KDP for short, KDP. And they're the ones that do this now. And it is a very amazing system.
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JG Wisdom:
Excellent. That's excellent. Next question. How has technology changed the way books are printed?
Darrell Backen:
Its just a major thing. They have print on demand that's why they can afford to do this. If they get an order... They do not print your book until they have an order.
JG Wisdom:
Oh.
Darrell Backen:
They are not running... I've printed magazines where I'm doing 60, 80, 100,000 copies of that magazine. And those
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presses are rolling. They don't do that. They press a button, they sell one, they print one, they ship one, done. They have no cost. JG Wisdom:
Wow.
Darrell Backen:
That's the secret that has changed is that its print on demand.
JG Wisdom:
Excellent. Excellent. Next question. How can you get the book printed on demand?
Darrell Backen:
Well, you... People, they advertise the book for you and when they get an order, they get
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paid and they print it. And if you want to order it, you can ask them to send you one or a hundred copies. Simple. You just ask for it. JG Wisdom:
Oh, okay, great. Now the million dollar question, how much money do you make writing a book?
Darrell Backen:
It costs you nothing to print it and you do not make a [inaudible 00:22:37] right up front. My books are technical. I do not make money off writing the books, but I've made tens of thousands of dollars from..
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Here's a concept, what is the root word of authority? Author. As soon as you've written a book, you become an authority on that topic. Now I've written seven or eight books on digital marketing and marketing. If you type my name, Darrell Backen books on the very first page of Google at the top, all of my books are listed. JG Wisdom:
Wow.
Darrell Backen:
This is the most powerful thing, I've closed so many deals. And I just say, "Well, there's my books." "He's got seven books
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on there, he knows what he is doing. Just hire him. Make it so." That was it. I never had to go through the song and dance and all the rest. I'm the authority. JG Wisdom:
[inaudible 00:23:35]
Darrell Backen:
So, that was it.
JG Wisdom:
Wow- [inaudible 00:23:38]
Darrell Backen:
Now this is something that KDP does at Amazon. They are the ones that put all the stuff there. If you publish a book by yourself and you print it at the local printer, it does not work
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that way. It's not the way to go in my opinion. I would push it with the Amazon, whatever they changed the name to it's KDP now, but they publish your book and they market it and they put all that stuff into the Google Guice so that you show up on Google. So that's a major, major thing. JG Wisdom:
Excellent. Why do you choose KDP, kindle Direct Publishing?
Darrell Backen:
Those same reasons. They take all the headache out of it. I'm not paying up front. It costs nothing to publish. I've never
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paid a dime to have it published and they take care of it. And I have the books in my hand, I get authors copies sent to me and I have people who have done the same system and they buy a hundred or 500 copies to do a book launch, but they buy it at wholesale. There's the price that you pay on the book and then there's a wholesale price, which is just the cost of printing. And it's very inexpensive $2, $3, $4 a book, not a lot.
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JG Wisdom:
Wow. Excellent. What is the benefit of using this system?
Darrell Backen:
The benefit is that you are able to... Now, if you make a change to your book, you can make changes. And because it's all digital, you can do the updates and stuff. So it works very well. You can do another addition very quick and easily, and you can sell your newer edition as well as the older edition.
JG Wisdom:
Okay, excellent. What does it cost to use the KDP system?
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Darrell Backen:
As I mentioned before, they don't charge you to store it or do anything. They charge you a percentage of the sale of the book. That's what they do. So it's very simple and easy.
JG Wisdom:
Excellent. Who owns KDP?
Darrell Backen:
Amazon, Jeff Bezos. There you go. He started selling books out of his garage back in 1995. And this is what it's gone to.
JG Wisdom:
Wow. Next question. What is an ISBN number?
Darrell Backen:
Okay. That is the number that all books have that are
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published. It is a number that has to be put on a book in order to go into a library or something like that. It is the International Standard Book Number or something, some fancy name to it, but every major book has to have one. JG Wisdom:
How do you get an ISBN number?
Darrell Backen:
That's the secret of using the KDP, they supply you with one.
JG Wisdom:
Oh- [inaudible 00:27:05]
Darrell Backen:
I went through all these headaches of looking. "How do
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I get an ISB number? How do..." Oh, major headache, major headache. They took my headaches away. That was the big thing because people, when they don't know, they don't know. If you don't know where the fire exit is. It's nice to have that little sign that points to you. That's the idea. JG Wisdom:
Excellent. Wow.
Darrell Backen:
Yeah.
JG Wisdom:
Next question. What size formats can your book be?
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Darrell Backen:
I've done many different sizes. A six by eight. I've done a eight and a half by 11 hard cover book, my last book I did. And I didn't publish it I just print and got it and I didn't make it available to the government... To the public. It was a hard cover book and I did it as a test to see what... How the printing would work inside it. Because it was full of full color pictures. It was a 500 page three and a half pound book and it cost me $62 to have printed.
JG Wisdom:
Wow.
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Darrell Backen:
That would cost a fortune.
JG Wisdom:
Oh yes. Wow. Excellent. Can it be in full color?
Darrell Backen:
It is. You can have..., You have a choice full color or black and white. I've done both types of books and it's not that much to do. I mean, you couldn't even print on a printer. These 500 pages of full color would run your ink out of. I mean, it is amazing what they do for that kind of money.
JG Wisdom:
Excellent. Next, can you have full bleed photo pages?
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Darrell Backen:
That's what I wanted to test and I did test it and it does work. A full bleed is when, if you look at a magazine or book and it goes all the way to the end of the page, you can have that.
JG Wisdom:
Oh, excellent. Can it be hard cover?
Darrell Backen:
I did. That's a new feature that came out when they switched to KDP. They offered hard cover, so I wanted to try it and it is a really amazing thing. It weighs three and a half pounds. You put it on your coffee table and you can produce a family album or
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any of that even just for noncommercial use. If it's grandma's birthday and she's 101 years old, print 50 copies for everybody and they all have a life history of the family. JG Wisdom:
Wow. That's excellent.
Darrell Backen:
And it's all photos. That book has one to two pages, the very first thing I say on the book and on the cover, it has a QR code and it says, "Do not buy this book, scan the QR code and you get the digital book."
JG Wisdom:
Oh.
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Darrell Backen:
So I made this. This is another thing I've learned in the last couple years, is that my objective with writing books was to transfer knowledge, not to make money off of it. So my books are available for free if they scan the QR code.
JG Wisdom:
Oh, excellent. Okay. Will KDP sell and collect the money for me?
Darrell Backen:
They do. I've sold in Europe and South America. I've never had to do anything with the transactions. They collect the money, they do it in euros, they
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do it in yen. They do all this other stuff and US dollars and they keep the money and they pay you... They keep a certain amount. They don't pay you until they got a lot of money to pay you, so. JG Wisdom:
Excellent.
Darrell Backen:
We got a couple, two, $300 tied up with them, but that's nothing.
JG Wisdom:
Okay. Excellent. Next question. Can I order a collection of my books for a book launch at wholesale rate?
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Darrell Backen:
Ye s . T h a t ' s w h a t I w a s mentioned before is that if you're going to do a book launch, you can order a hundred copies for yourself at the wholesale rate. Now I'll give you... These are numbers off the top of my head. My friend calls them air figures I pull them out of the air, but from memory, say it's a $20 book it costs me about two and a half dollars to print them. And probably $20 to have them shipped. So if I do say a hundred copies, so it's two, $300 and at a book launch, if you want to sell it for 20 bucks,
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well, then you've got $2,000 worth of books. JG Wisdom:
[inaudible 00:31:48]
Darrell Backen:
And you can do it at your book launch. There are people that have seminars and they're always selling books at the back for $20 bucks. And that's how they're doing it.
JG Wisdom:
Excellent. Can you do SEO for a book?
Darrell Backen:
Yes. Search engine optimization or a SEO can be done with all these other things too. And you can set up ways to sell your
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book by doing search engine optimization for it, putting the right keywords in. JG Wisdom:
Excellent. How do you do the formatting of the book?
Darrell Backen:
Okay. The formatting you choose how many pages you want, whether you want it single space or double space. And on my books, I always put an idea net I call it. An extra wide margin. My books are not normal. I say to them, "When you get an idea, jot it down, because you'll lose it." They're reading here and all my
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textbooks since when I was a kid, I wrote the ideas down. And when I had to study for a test, all I did was read my jotted down notes. And I got honors because it all... I don't remember that one line I remember everything that caused me to write that one line. And that was my little system. And I call it idea net. Catch the ideas when they come. JG Wisdom:
Excellent. How do you insert pictures in your book?
Darrell Backen:
Now I did everything on my Mac and I would take a picture
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and I would just insert it into the... I was using Pages. Pages was very easy. I did not use... I've got all these fancy equipment, but I don't know how to use it. Going to be honest here. I have a $10,000 complete Adobe Creative Suite, but it's like getting a 747 plane. I can't fly this thing it's useless to me. I bought it when I was a student, most people don't realize if you are a student in a university, you can get 90% discount on software. So I paid $1000 for this Creative Suite. I've still got it, but I don't have...
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I don't know how to use it completely, but I can use Pages. What I've learned in life, do you know what value is? Something you can use that's what's useful. JG Wisdom:
Wow.
Darrell Backen:
That's what's valuable something you can actually use.
JG Wisdom:
Indeed. How do you make resolution improvements to your photos?
Darrell Backen:
I had to go through that learning curve too, because when you print, you have to use good resolution. There are systems
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that I bought online and I'll put them in the course materials and it can take a photo that is at... Let's invent numbers again, air figures. It's one meg and I want to convert it to 100 meg. It'll go through this process and make it much clearer. The situation is, that you want to have it as clear as possible to go into print. JG Wisdom:
Of course. Excellent. What resolution does a photo have to be to print well?
Darrell Backen:
Traditionally 300 DPI, which is dots per square inch, is what the print is industry wants to have.
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Then I went through the learning curve so what's a dot per square inch compared to a meg. So I had to go through this big formula thing. So there's this system that you can find out how many megs is going to be at 300 DPI. So I went through all those learning curves. JG Wisdom:
What resolution does an online digital book need to be?
Darrell Backen:
They're generally around 75 DPI. So much, much less. Everything you look on your... When you print something, you develop on your computer. "Oh,
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that looks wonderful." You go to print it looks like hell. Because it looks good on the computer screen, but not... I've printed several books that were simply tests and that big hardcover book, it was all just testing to see what would work. I do a lot of tests because there's nobody for me to ask. I'm not going to... I have to go and test it and learn by myself what works and what doesn't. I actually printed... You can print magazines now, most people don't realize you can print a magazine digital on demand. I
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have developed and printed a magazine with side by side photos of the original picture and then the one that I improved. So I could see what works and what doesn't. It was a full gloss full color magazine. JG Wisdom:
Incredible. Can you use photos from online sources?
Darrell Backen:
You can, if you convert them but the major concern is copyright. They're not yours. They belong to that person that posted them.
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JG Wisdom:
Excellent. How about copyrights for those photos?
Darrell Backen:
Well, the copyrights... The person that owns it or publishes it owns those copyright you don't want to get into that thing so you're better to get to some... Go to a place where you can find photos where they sell them that would be better.
JG Wisdom:
Excellent. Another question on copyright. This one is how do you get a copyright for your book?
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Darrell Backen:
Now, this is a big learning curve I went through too back in 1982. My first little project called Quick Call. It was a little wallet directory before there were cell phones originally did not have... The first cell phone, had no memory whatsoever. So this was a system for them to pull it out of their wallet and use that number and call on their cell phone. So I copyrighted. And I went to Canada and sent the money in and stuff like that and then I found out, "So do you need a copy of it?" "Well, no, we got...
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We just... You have a copyright now." JG Wisdom:
[inaudible 00:38:47]
Darrell Backen:
"How do you know what..." "Well, it's up to you to prove it." So now what I learned from that experience is you type in the little C in the circle, copyright your name and the year and it's copy written. That's it. Keep a copy for yourself and prove the date and that's it.
JG Wisdom:
Okay. Okay. What are ways to create content?
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Darrell Backen:
Well, like we're doing now and you have the knowledge to do... Pretty much everybody has a area of expertise, but organizing those thoughts and doing just like what I did to you, I sat down and I rewrote that's the only time I edited this thing is I edited the questions that I sent to you to ask me. That's what everyone should do is get 50, 60 questions put them in. So that now when you ask me the questions, I know the answer because I sent you the question. Real simple system. That's how you get content it's all in my
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head, but I won't sit there and write a book like this, because I won't think of it. I haven't been sparked with the idea. You have to be sparked to pull the information out of you. JG Wisdom:
Excellent. How do you format your books to go to press?
Darrell Backen:
This is the biggest thing that happened is that, like I said, the technology improvements. It's a simple PDF now. Now from my experience with printing magazines and stuff, you used to have to do... You get it all printed and you leave a space
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for a photo and you have to bring the actual photo in and they do it on a big drum scanner. And it was very expensive to do that type of stuff all those years ago. But now, simple. You do... Anybody with a decent computer, convert it to a PDF and send there and it's done. Very quick and easy. And I had to go through all these nail biting moments, figuring will this work, will that work? Now I figured out it all works. So simple PDF.
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JG Wisdom:
Excellent. How is the manuscript presented to the press?
Darrell Backen:
That's... You put it in the method and the sizing that you want. You decide what size it is and CreateSpace or KDP will send you a formatted. You... They send you a format script and you take your raw script you get from Rev.com and you copy and paste and it just auto fills. It auto fills your 855 pages.
JG Wisdom:
Oh.
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Darrell Backen:
That's it so simple. See, the reason they don't charge much is they're doing with a digital file it costs them nothing. Click, click, click. "Oh, somebody bought this click. Money comes in, click." That's it. You're doing all the work.
JG Wisdom:
Wow. Incredible. Is the process the same for a book?
Darrell Backen:
Say that again?
JG Wisdom:
The question that I have here is, is the process the same for a book?
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Darrell Backen:
Yes, it is the same for a book or for a magazine. Any of those, it's still the same process, audio to digital and put it in a proper format, that's it?
JG Wisdom:
Excellent. Now another question on that is the process the same for an audio book?
Darrell Backen:
Now there's the thing, because what we're doing here is now an audio book.
JG Wisdom:
[inaudible 00:42:44]
Darrell Backen:
When I'm done with this file that is an audio book for Kindle.
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JG Wisdom:
Oh.
Darrell Backen:
Now think of this, share your information once and make it available over all formats. And this is something simple. We've created... And see someone who listens to this audio file on Kindle they're going to be like, "We're sitting there having coffee and they're the third person at the table." They're just listening on our conversation. That's why it's so easy to create conversational content because people... That's the way our life is from the old caveman days.
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They're all sitting around the fire conversational, that's it. JG Wisdom:
Oh, that's great. Is the process the same for digital book like Kindle?
Darrell Backen:
Yes it is. Actually I made that wrong. It's called Audible is the... They got all these fancy names, same company. Audible is for the audible book. Geez that's how they came up with that name, okay-
JG Wisdom:
Excellent-
Darrell Backen:
And that's how we came up... Now you and I know the inside
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story. I created the name for this concept yesterday, when I was talking to you. Content create... Conversational content creation. JG Wisdom:
[inaudible 00:44:16]
Darrell Backen:
I didn't have a name for it before I just called it that, but it works just like audible books that you listen to. Okay, fine.
JG Wisdom:
Incredible. Yes. Now still on process, is the process the same for a digital book like Kindle?
Darrell Backen:
Yes. Once you've got this, the script that you've got, when it's formatted into your book, you
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just... When you're actually doing it with KDP, you have an option putting it on Kindle for the same price, which is nothing. So you click it on there and they can be sold on Kindle too. Because now it's a digital book they don't even print it. It's an audio book or a digital book and they just click it, there you go. JG Wisdom:
Wow. Still in process.
Darrell Backen:
Yes.
JG Wisdom:
Is the process the same for a magazine?
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Darrell Backen:
Yes. Exact same process. Magazine you just have a little bit different format, but the PDF, everything is the same. And you can have a magazine... This can be put into an article for a magazine, very easily. Take parts of it and put it into a magazine.
JG Wisdom:
Excellent. Is the process the same for a video magazine?
Darrell Backen:
This is a new concept that I've learned a couple years ago. You can now have digital magazines that have the embedded videos. That's one of the processes that
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I do, is that you can have all the content around the magazine and have a video the show and tell video will be inside the magazine. JG Wisdom:
Wow. Technology.
Darrell Backen:
Oh, it's all technology. I mean my entire lifetime. Okay. I'll tell you how old I am. I'm 65 years old now.
JG Wisdom:
Wow.
Darrell Backen:
Most people are retiring, I'm just starting my second wind. When I started my very first publication in 1967 it was a
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flyer. It was... I hand drew it and I took it to my uncles who had a moving company. And it was printed on a Gestetner machine, this little thing, you cranked by hand and it stunk like hell and it made a copy of it. It went clank clank clank. And that was it. That's how in the old days the schools did out their... They did it on a Gestetner machine. It was a... Before there were photocopies, they were Gestetners and they just printed the school bulletins on this Gestetner machine. And
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that's how I started. There was no anything back in those days. Darrell Backen:
I actually... I was a little artist when I was a kid. I was 10 years old at that time. My dad had started a company and said, "Well, can you make a flyer?" I don't know what a flyer is." "Well you're drawing a picture." "Okay." So I looked at the comics and there was Mutt and Jeff in there. So I drew Mutt and Jeff raking up leaves. It was a lawn care and that was it. And I put... And it was so successful my dad quit his job as a
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milkman. He made more money in six weeks than he made all year as a milkman. And he started his business. JG Wisdom:
Wow, incredible.
Darrell Backen:
Yes.
JG Wisdom:
Thank you for that story. Next question is the process the same for a YouTube video?
Darrell Backen:
I specialized in YouTube videos for the last 25 years and the secret to a YouTube video you can create the actual book that's in the video, or you can put other stuff and you can put the
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link to your book in the video. And the video will have your show and tell, and you can do SEO for video. And I call them video brochures that's the name I coined them. And they will... The main thing about doing a video brochure. They're hosted on YouTube. Okay? Here's a little aside. YouTube is owned by who? Take a guess. Google. JG Wisdom:
Google, Google.
Darrell Backen:
Google they paid... I think it was five billion for it to couple of 22, 23 year old kids and they make probably five billion a
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year just in revenue off it, but they give you the very best placement on Google. The other major things they don't show up on Google. If you've never seen a Vimeo or all these other things, I never bothered posting on those things because they're generally inside, they're not public knowledge things. I've never seen a Vimeo video ever show up on Google when you do a SEO search. JG Wisdom:
Okay. Excellent. Excellent information Darrell. Next
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question, is the process the same for a podcast? Darrell Backen:
A podcast is basically what we're doing now. I could post this as a podcast. Disclaimer, I've never done a podcast, but this would be a podcast. Maybe we'll do a podcast someday.
JG Wisdom:
As a matter of fact, I am booked to do a podcast and I could have done it since January. I have till the end of the year and I had no idea where to start and how to do it. So maybe that's[inaudible 00:50:05]
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Darrell Backen:
You can actually use this if you want, I'll send you the audio file and that can be your podcast. There you go.
JG Wisdom:
Excellent. There we go.
Darrell Backen:
Great. Yes.
JG Wisdom:
Yes. It's the same as a podcast.
Darrell Backen:
Yes.
JG Wisdom:
Yes.
Darrell Backen:
Because as far as any podcast, I've listened to, it's somebody talking and sharing ideas that's what this is.
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JG Wisdom:
Yeah.
Darrell Backen:
And it's usually two people. Sometimes it's one, but it's very good when it's two people, because now it's a conversation not a monotone.
JG Wisdom:
Yeah. Excellent- [inaudible 00:50:34]
Darrell Backen:
Now a little aside as well. When people talk there is inflection in their voice. There is... Nobody's checking the spelling. It's not spelled. Nobody's checking the diction. They're not checking it. It's just a natural flow of content
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and ideas. That's what makes easy listening and easy reading too. When you're reading something, people can read this very well. It's not hard to read. They're not trying to... "Well, what's that $10 word. Okay. Let's go to the dictionary. Thesaurus." Okay. "Oh, you're pernicious. What the hell's pernicious?" JG Wisdom:
No. Of course.
Darrell Backen:
Yeah.
JG Wisdom:
Makes sense.
Darrell Backen:
Yeah.
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JG Wisdom:
Okay. Is the process the same for creating a Thinkific course? [inaudible 00:51:34] course.
Darrell Backen:
It's called Thinkific. A little story here. I had wanted to do courses for a long time and I saw advertised a course that was in the States and I... [inaudible 00:51:50] And it had a picture of the book and some CDs and stuff. And I said, "I live in Canada. How are you going to send this course to me and go through the border and taxes? Do I have to pay duty on it?" "Oh, don't worry about it's
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all digital." So I bought the thing. Darrell Backen:
I paid $800 for this course and I paid... Not that I wanted the course I wanted to figure out, "How is he doing this?" I paid the $800 entrance fee. He sent me the link and it says, Thinkific. That's who does this, where are they? I'm typing in. Oh, they're here in downtown Vancouver, five blocks from where I am. I bought this from North Carolina. Again, it is not... The secrets to life are where to find the information. I
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did not know that this place existed. I did not know. And I have made thousands and thousands of dollars on producing content on Thinkific. JG Wisdom:
Wow.
Darrell Backen:
And the benefit of it is, is that once you've done your modules and everything we're doing here is a module on what we've done today is 50 different modules. Because each question and answer is a module, I will add to it the show and tell videos and that is a course on how to
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write a book. Without writing anything. [inaudible 00:53:29] JG Wisdom:
[inaudible 00:53:31]
Darrell Backen:
And that's the course and it will be effective for decades after I'm gone.
JG Wisdom:
Excellent. Excellent. Next question. How long does it take to write a book with this way?
Darrell Backen:
We've just done it now. It's been approximately 57 minutes since we started and the content part is done in about another 10 minutes and that's it-
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JG Wisdom:
[inaudible 00:54:05]
Darrell Backen:
I'm not going to edit or do a thing to this. It's finished. I'll send this to Rev, they'll send it back. I'll format it and I'll do it in the five different methods. So you can basically write a book in an hour.
JG Wisdom:
Oh that is excellent. Darrell, if I may, may I add one question?
Darrell Backen:
Sure.
JG Wisdom:
You mentioned that all you would do is add the show and tell videos-
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Darrell Backen:
Yes.
JG Wisdom:
To your modules. How do you do a show and tell video[inaudible 00:54:39]
Darrell Backen:
Well, now I got to go through the research that I used this great, great program for years. And then they sold it to... It was called the [inaudible 00:54:52] and it would have hundreds of thousands of video clips. And I could just type it in, I've done hundreds of videos. But they sold that to... They retired and sold it to GoDaddy and GoDaddy's done nothing with it
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for years, it's sitting there doing nothing. But I got to find a new place... A new way to do that, do the show and tell. Darrell Backen:
Because with them, all I did was... I would do the narrated brochure on there. I show the pictures of like [inaudible 00:55:25] for instance, that tracked hydrovac. I'd show the picture of the tracked hydrovac going through and explain all the features and benefits, how it could do it. What areas that they go to that would create a video. And then what I did is that
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through my SEO background, every city, town, and village in Alberta, it was optimized to show up when people type 'truck hydrovac' they got total market domination. JG Wisdom:
Wow.
Darrell Backen:
That was... And then unfortunately somebody bought their company. So I was out of a job, so.
JG Wisdom:
Wow. Oh-
Darrell Backen:
You-
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JG Wisdom:
Excellent. Excellent Darrell. We've come to the end of the questions today Darrel, was there anything else-
Darrell Backen:
Do you have any questions for me?
JG Wisdom:
Yes I do.
Darrell Backen:
Okay.
JG Wisdom:
The last question that I have for you is, you mentioned you're just going to send this off to... Could you repeat where you're sending this?
Darrell Backen:
Rev.com
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JG Wisdom:
To Rev.com and they're-
Darrell Backen:
Yes.
JG Wisdom:
Going to do the writing, correct?
Darrell Backen:
They transcribe it. Yes.
JG Wisdom:
They're going to-
Darrell Backen:
They'll be listening to it. And they're going to write word for word, everything that we said into a script and they will email me that script-
JG Wisdom:
And that-
Darrell Backen:
It'll take about a day.
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JG Wisdom:
Oh wow. I was going to ask, how long does it take[inaudible 00:56:58]
Darrell Backen:
It takes about a day.
JG Wisdom:
Okay. Excellent- [inaudible 00:57:02]
Darrell Backen:
And you and I will find out one hour of talking, how many pages it'll end up being. It'll come in words. I'm going to guesstimate at 20,000 words.
JG Wisdom:
Wow.
Darrell Backen:
That's my guesstimate. We'll find out how many. And it'll-
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JG Wisdom:
[inaudible 00:57:15]
Darrell Backen:
Probably cost $30, $40 to have that done.
JG Wisdom:
Excellent, [inaudible 00:57:20]
Darrell Backen:
I mean can you imagine somebody transcribing an hour's worth for $40 bucks? Unbelievable.
JG Wisdom:
It is unbelievable. And then technically you have the transcript of your book or is it-
Darrell Backen:
That's right.
JG Wisdom:
you're done.
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Darrell Backen:
You're done.
JG Wisdom:
Oh yeah.
Darrell Backen:
I have the transcript. I'll have the... Then I will format it into the... And I will add to this in the course how you post it on all these things.
JG Wisdom:
Okay.
Darrell Backen:
Because I will do instructional videos, how you post to Rev, how you get everything and take it from there.
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JG Wisdom:
Excellent. Excellent Darrell. It has been fantastic. Thank you so much for your time today.
Darrell Backen:
Thank you. Thank you for your help.
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