You’ve worked really hard at growing your business over the years, and you are beginning to gain some recognition for all of your hard work. You are being asked to speak at conferences, you are being sought out for interviews and panel participation - and then the day comes: a publisher approaches you to write a book in your area of expertise. It is an honor to be recognized for all your hard work and part of the reward is the fulfillment of a dream: to publish a book in your chosen industry, where you will be seen as a subject matter authority in your area of expertise, whether it’s tech or tamales. Authoring a book (or several books) is very time consuming, and balancing the task of authoring a book, staying within a publishers time line requirements while still maintaining and running your day to day business is requires skills of organization, prioritization, delegation and patience! Lisa Sabin-Wilson is the owner of a busy and successful web design and development company: E.Webscapes. While maintaining the day to day operations of her business, she is a regular public speaker at national conferences and she is the author of several books in her area of expertise, WordPress and web design. Since 2006, Lisa has written a total of 7 books for Wiley Publishing and, in this session, she shares her experiences in balancing books and business without completely losing her mind, business, family or friends.

1. Balancing Books & Business Lisa Sabin-Wilson

3. I Lost My Mind So You Don’t Have To Lisa Sabin-Wilson

27. Balancing Books & Business Rule #1: YOUR BOOK DEADLINES ARE NOT YOUR CLIENT’S PROBLEM . Definitely let them know what you have going on – but if you’ve promised them XYZ in 20 days, make sure you deliver it, unless you’ve made other arrangements.

28. Balancing Books & Business Rule #2: DON’T BITE THE HAND THAT FEEDS YOU . Most likely, it is your business practice, skills or experience that got you noticed and got you this far to begin with – in a world of book deadlines, don’t forget to continue to nurture and care for your business.

29. Balancing Books & Business Rule #3: DELEGATE AND THEN …. DELEGATE . From dishes and laundry to email and invoicing, recruit some help to do some of the more mundane tasks that anyone can help you do, reserving your time for those tasks that ONLY you can do.

32. Get Organized and stay that way. Create basic documents from scratch You can easily do all the formatting basics. Upload files from your computer then edit them. Google Docs accepts DOC, XLS, ODT, ODS, RTF, CSV, PPT, XLS and more. Share your documents with others. This makes for an easy review process – particularly if you have someone copy editing your work. It’s free! Google Docs: http://docs.google.com

33. Get Organized and stay that way. Zoho Writer An alternative to Google Docs for those who’d rather not Google. It’s free! Zoho Writer: http://writer.zoho.com

34. Get Organized and stay that way. This may seem obvious … Disconnect! Email, Twitter, Facebook, Chat, Browser windows SHUT IT OFF!

35. Get Organized and stay that way. DropBox Store files, documents, images, etc in an online storage service like DropBox so you always have access to your vital book files from any computer in the world. Sign up is free and gives you 50GB of storage just for signing up. Dropbox: http://dropbox.com

37. Balancing Books & Business Thank you for coming …. You can find my slides online at: http://lisas.co/books-biz You can find me on Twitter at: @LisaSabinWilson