Evolution of Repurpose Your Career Book and Launch

Repurpose Your Career 3rd Edition

Creating the 3rd edition of the book has been a transformative experience. Why you may ask?

The world has changed significantly in the last couple of years.

The economy has greatly improved for many but not for all.

Those of us in the 2nd half of life have not always benefited from the improvements in the economy and technology. In building the Career Pivot Community website I have learned a lot. There have been some common themes that everyone wants or needs:

Freedom to work on what they want to work, when they want to work and how hard they want to work.
Accountability so we actually take action.
Our horizons broadened so that we see what possibilities the world provides us.

The goal of the 3rd edition was to shift past where we have been and to start looking at what the future could be. That likely means working a collection of jobs, working for ourselves and entering the gig economy. Most of us will not, and more than likely not want, a single full-time job as we work into our 70s.

If you have not read parts I and II of this series, I would suggest you stop and read them now.

New Book Cover but Same Format

The metaphor for the images on the front cover has always been walking toward a sunrise or new morning. I wanted to keep that metaphor but change the person walking from a man to a woman. Men’s shoes are easy but women’s shoes – not so easy. Let me know what you think.

I kept the same physical size and font, removed any quotes from the front cover and the book expanded to 180 pages.

I removed many chapters that related to job search but those will reside in the resource center that accompanies the book. The look and feel of the book would be very similar to past editions.

Review Team

I built a review team that grew to over 210 individuals that were given access to 5 new chapters of the book. Their input proved to be invaluable. I have also had 40+ individuals agree to write reviews on Amazon.com within a week of the book’s release. I gave them access to a PDF version of the book several weeks before the book’s release and I expect maybe 20-30 will write reviews. It is getting early reviews that will help promote the book on Amazon’s book marketplace.

Listen to the most recent episode

A small subset of those on the review team received proof paperback copies. I am not able to get proof copies sent to me in Mexico in a reasonable amount of time and I needed someone to review the book for fit and finish. This team of individuals went WAY ABOVE the call of duty and did a thorough read-through of the book. They caught many minor formatting errors, a few punctuation issues and finally a few wording/flow issues with the book.

Were all issues identified and fixed? Nope! I am sure there are still a few issues that will surface. I also made the decision to not fix some real minor wording/ flow issues. I will look at addressing those issues in a few months as I will likely do a minor update in January.

Repurpose Your Career Podcast

Once again, I used the Repurpose Your Career Podcast to help with the development and launch of the book. I produced 5 episodes where I read pre-release chapters from the book:

This helped me refine my recording techniques for producing the audio version of the book. I had hoped the recording of the later episodes could be used for the audiobook. This proved fruitless because the main issue with the audio quality was my own voice. As I write this blog post in early September, we are still in the rainy season in Mexico. I will have to wait for things to dry out before my voice will be consistent enough from day to day to be able to record the book.

Next Steps

The Kindle edition will publish on September 12th and be priced at 99 cents. On September 16th, the paperback edition will be made available at $14.97 though it is available for pre-order today. The Kindle edition price will increase to $8.97. I will also lower the prices on all of the previous editions of the book.

I plan on recording the audio version of the book in November and December and publish it in early January of 2020.

I have halted all Amazon ads for the 2nd edition of the book but will restart those ads on September 16th with a significant ad budget. Later in the month, I will start several Facebook ad campaigns to promote the book. I have learned the mechanics and strategies from taking the Self Publishing Formula’s Ads for Authors online course.

Finishing the Book

Getting the book finished has proved to be challenging in that my book cover designer now lives in Ghana. Susan Lahey, my co-author, has moved to Porto, Portugal. The best method for communicating with one another has been voice calls over Facebook Messenger. Since I live in Ajijic, Mexico this has been a multi-continent endeavor.

As I complete this post on September 3rd, the Kindle edition is almost ready and the paperback is complete.

Is the book perfect? Nope. There are still some strange formatting issues on the Kindle that we may not be able to resolve. These are very minor. I have frozen all editorial changes and the book will go out as it exists today.

Thank you to everyone who has supported me in this effort.

Marc Miller

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