Courses for Writers with Jon LaPoma

First Draft to Bestseller: Publish a Book that Sells

Follow a step-by-step guide with the most up-to-date and comprehensive information on how to create, self-publish, and market your book, taught by a certified teacher with over ten years of classroom experience. 

Have you written the first draft of a book but have no idea what to do with it? Do you dream of seeing your book sitting on the shelves of your favorite bookstore? Would you like to learn strategies that have helped many self-published authors quit their jobs and write full-time?

You’re living during the best time ever to be an author. Due to advances in technology, now anyone can present their books to a worldwide audience with the click of a button. But, just because anyone can do it, that doesn’t mean it’s easy, nor does it guarantee that these authors will have any success. Every year, about million new books are published, adding to an already-saturated market. I created From First Draft to Bestseller to show beginning authors how they can create, self-publish, and market a beautiful, high-quality book that will stand out in this crowded market and attract readers using effective and proven strategies that have helped many self-published authors sell enough books to quit their jobs and write full-time.

This course will cover:

  • ​How to edit and format your book
  • How to write an effective book blurb
  • How to increase your “social proof” by getting lots of credible reviews
  • How to build an engaged mailing list using autosequences
  • How to sell your books online and in brick and mortar stores
  • How to sell more books using Amazon Marketing Services and BookBub ads
  • How to avoid common pitfalls that trip up many beginning authors
  • How to turn your book into a screenplay, and much, much more.

Just to be clear, this course does not give any strategies on how to write a bestselling book, but rather focuses on how to turn your manuscript into a potentially bestselling book on the Amazon charts.

I’ve included the most up-to-date, proven and effective strategies to help authors of all budgets create the highest-quality book possible and build their readership from zero by targeting hungry readers with laser-like accuracy. From First Draft to Bestseller stands out from other online self-publishing courses due to its size and quality of material. Though it’s an 11+ hour course, it’s packed with relevant and concentrated information without the filler and redundancies that bog down other courses. It’s also taught by a certified teacher with over ten years of public school classroom experience, and it includes a lesson on how to turn your book into a screenplay.

I’m an award-winning, bestselling author of three independently published novels that have outsold authors such as Chuck Palahniuk, Michael Crichton, and Kurt Vonnegut on Amazon’s Kindle store. Two of my three novels have been recommended by Kirkus Reviews and my most recent, The Summer of Crud, was selected to the Barnes & Noble B&N Press Picks list for February/March 2018. I’ve also written eleven screenplays that have won over 150 awards/honors in various international screenwriting competitions, and in July 2017, I optioned one of those screenplays to one of the producers of the American Pie and Final Destination films. I currently live in San Diego, CA and teach at a public secondary school.

Achieving success as a self-published author is often a long-term journey, but if you stay positive and apply the strategies you learn from this course, you’ll likely experience enough successes along the way to keep you energized and moving forward on that path where you’ll learn things about yourself you that will amaze and inspire you. I’d love the opportunity to show you how I’ve achieved a number of the goals I’ve set for myself as a writer, and how I can help you to achieve your own. I’m ready when you are to take that first step of this journey together.

Follow a step-by-step guide on how to turn your manuscript into a potentially bestselling book that readers will love.

Enroll now!

Create

Learn how to:

  • Find a professional editor for your book
  • Format your book
  • Design your cover
  • Write an effective book blurb
  • Find lots of credible reviews
  • Deal with negative reviews in positive ways
  • Register an ISBN
  • Determine your book’s BISAC codes
  • Register a copyright for your book (in the US)
  • Turn your book or new story idea into a screenplay (Bonus section)
  • And more…

 

Publish

Learn how to:

  • Save time by publishing your book using an aggregator like Smashwords or Draft2Digital
  • Save money and have more promotional opportunities by “going direct”
  • Determine whether or not to use CreateSpace or IngramSpark to create the print version of your book
  • Sell your ebook on Amazon, Kobo, iBooks, and NOOK
  • Optimize your Amazon page by using effective keywords and categories, increasing your chances of having a bestseller
  • Set up your Amazon Author Central and Book Report accounts
  • Avoid getting your book and/or reviews blocked from Amazon
  • Give your book away for free on Amazon permanently, and why this can be a great strategy to sell books
  • Run promotions and sell your books to libraries using OverDrive on Kobo
  • And more…

Market

Learn how to:

  • Use the latest technology to target specific readers who’ll love your book
  • Sell books using BookBub and Amazon ads
  • Start a mailing list and sell books on autopilot using auto responders
  • Set up your book’s Goodreads and LibraryThing pages
  • Sell books by running ads on websites such as Ereader News Today, Booksends, The Fussy Librarian, BookGorilla, etc…
  • Increase your chances of being selected for a BookBub promotion (which is different from a BookBub ad)
  • Convince booksellers to sell your books in their stores
  • Convince librarians to buy your books for their libraries
  • Create free and beautiful Facebook banners, ad designs, and more using Canva
  • Find a number of contests for self-published books, and how winning these can help further your writing career
  • And more…

About the Instructor

Jonathan LaPoma professional headshot - award-winning screenwriter and author.Jonathan LaPoma is a Mexico City-based multi-genre author, 160x award-winning screenwriter, international screenplay consultant, and voice actor. Alexandra Maramenides of the prestigious Rêve Agency proudly represents his multidisciplinary slate of creative intellectual properties.

LaPoma holds a BA in history and secondary education (SUNY Geneseo, 2005) and leverages over 20 years of professional teaching experience as a certified public school educator and global online tutor. His creative voice was deeply forged through extensive travel across the United States and Mexico, as well as a decade of profound internal isolation spent overcoming crippling OCD. He translated this existential friction into a massive, interconnected catalog published and managed under Almendro Arts, spanning 5 psychological novels, 15 screenplays, and hundreds of songs and poems. His writing masterfully explores themes of alienation and misery as human constructions that characters can transform through self-understanding and the acceptance of suffering.

🎬 Screenwriting Success & Script Doctoring Expertise

As a film industry professional, LaPoma’s screenplays have captured over 160 international awards and honors in prestigious screenwriting competitions. Veteran Hollywood producer Warren Zide (American Pie, Final Destination) optioned his dark comedy feature script Harm for the Holidays alongside Wexlfish Pictures, and award-winning producer Byron A. Martin (Disney, Sony, Universal attachment history) is attached to his feature script La Tierra Que Yo Amo (Land that I Love).

Expanding his industry development footprint, LaPoma operates as a high-profile international screenplay consultant and script doctor. He has executed the critical script doctoring phase for the bicultural film project Chinese Tequila for executive producer Carlos Bravo, completed key screenplay polish work for the independent feature Montreal Girls, and served as a co-writer and development consultant for ¡Vamos, Emilio!. An accomplished voice actor, he has dubbed multiple feature films and Netflix series in English, and he translated and wrote the official English subtitles for the acclaimed feature-length documentary Entre Tierras. He has held active memberships in The Authors Guild and Gotham Ghostwriters, served as a featured speaker for the San Diego Writers/Editors Guild, and served as an official jury member for international film festivals in San Diego and Cordoba.

📚 Bestselling Book Publishing & Literary Recognition

LaPoma is the author of a bestselling five-book interconnected literary series comprising Hammond, The Summer of Crud, Understanding the Alacrán, Developing Minds: An American Ghost Story, and The Soul City Salvation. Four of his books have earned official recommendations from Kirkus Reviews, reaching #1 on the Amazon Bestseller lists across the USA, Canada, and Australia, while capturing top honors at the Eric Hoffer Book Awards and the Stargazer Literary Prizes.

As a prominent literary figure, his work has achieved global exhibition at the historic Frankfurt Book Fair via the Combined Book Exhibit, and he has headlined exclusive author events at premier independent hubs like Warwick’s in La Jolla and Mysterious Galaxy Bookstore. His commentary has achieved national broadcast media scale, featuring in deep-dive interviews on major networks like WIBC Radio Indianapolis and WTMJ Radio Milwaukee, where he mapped his flagship novel directly to modern policy frameworks.

LaPoma enjoys helping emerging authors, screenwriters, and independent artists dismantle psychological creative blocks to cleanly package, edit, market, and distribute their own high-value literary intellectual property.

Enroll now!