From Your Head to Their Hands

Book excerpt: “Our favourite writer of instructional manuals”- Neal Stephenson, from his foreword to Swordfighting, for writers, game designers, and martial artists. Guy Windsor’s historical martial arts training manuals are legendary. His first was published in 2004, and he’s been producing them ever since. They generate about half his income. So he is expert in writing, publishing, and marketing books for historical martial artists, and in this book he’ll teach you how to do it. The goal of training manuals is to teach skills. This one will teach you: • How to write well • How to plan your book, or write without a plan • How to get reader feedback as you go • How to avoid procrastination and imposter syndrome • What tools to use • How to write without destroying your body • How to incorporate photos and videos • How to edit your work • What should be outsourced • How to publish: commercial, indy, or something else? • What metadata you need, and how to create it • How to choose your publishing platform • How to market your book • How to find your readers • How to launch • Everything you need to know about copyright and piracy • The best book marketing strategy of all time. Also included: Guy’s article Show Your Work: how to communicate your historical martial arts research with the historical martial arts community. If you’ve ever wanted to write a training manual for historical martial arts (or anything else), this book will show you how to do it. Buy it, read it, and get writing!