Sermons into Books

 Are You Ready to Turn Your Sermons into a Book?

If you've thought about turning your audio/video sermons into a book, you've come to the right place to get started. The first step in the process is having your sermons transcribed. Once you have the transcripts, you can edit them yourself or hire an editor to help you get the transcripts into manuscript format. We'll be happy to recommend an editor/publisher to help you. See below for more information about the three steps to turn your sermons into a book.

Step 1 – Audio to Transcript

If your audio sermons are posted on your website, let us know which sermons you need transcribed, and we'll download them for you. If they aren't posted online, but they are in digital format (MP3, WAV, WMA, AVI...), we'll create a free Dropbox folder for you, and all you'll have to do is drag and drop your files into the folder. Once the files are in the folder, we'll receive a message that there are new files. Then we'll drag and drop them onto our computers and get right to work transcribing.

If your audio sermons are on cassette, CD, or DVD, you can send them to us, and we'll be happy to convert them to digital format and transcribe them for you.

If your sermons are handwritten, we can type them for you into a digital format.

Step 2 – Transcript to Manuscript

Once the transcripts are completed, we'll send them to you to review and revise. You'll adjust paragraph breaks where needed, add sub-headings, etc. to turn the transcripts into a basic manuscript. You'll change specific names to fictitious names when necessary to protect the identity of friends and relatives. You'll also add a little here and delete a little there and make other changes as needed to better communicate your original sermon points in written form.

Next to writing and preaching the sermons in the first place, this is your most important step in the process. The more you do in this step, the less the editors have to do, and the more money you save. For many pastors, this is the also the most intimidating part of the process because they think, “I'm a preacher, not a writer. I'm not sure I can do this.” If that describes you, don't worry! Once you're done revising the transcripts into a rough draft manuscript, experienced editors can help you. They'll give you an honest assessment of what they think should be changed in order to turn all your hard work into a polished manuscript.

Step 3 – Manuscript to Book

Next, you'll turn your manuscript over to the publisher of your choice to take care of the rest of the process of turning your sermons into a book. They can help you come up with a title for your book. They can also help you with your book's cover design, ISBN and bar code, and help you register your book with Books in Print and the Library of Congress. Most publishers will even help you sell your book on Amazon, Google Book Preview, and other Internet retailers.

Why You Should Choose Us to Help You

You should choose Intentional Reach because we can save you a lot of time and money on the editing process. Here are some of the services we offer:

Bible verse accuracy: We will look up every verse to make sure you didn't mean to say 1 Kings when you said 2 Kings or verses 2-8 when you said verses 3-9 or the name Elijah when you said Elisha. Looking up the verses is also important because if you said, "In Psalm 29 it says...," it's impossible to know whether you meant chapter 29 or chapter 20, verse 9, without looking it up.

Hebrew/Greek words: We will look up the correct spelling of Hebrew and Greek words in the Strong's Concordance and if we're still stumped, we'll put a blank and time stamp for you.

Grammar correction and light editing: We will leave out the uhs and ums, laughs and coughs, and "Hey Bill, I don't think my microphone is on..." We'll correct grammar, leave out crutch words and phrases (like Andy Stanley's infamous "Listen, listen..."), and recast sentences so they read more smoothly.

Bible Verse Formatting: We'll format all Bible verses in your choice of bold, italics, and/or color to differentiate between direct biblical quotes and paraphrases.

Proofreading: This is one of the most important steps we take in the transcription process for you. Every transcript will be proofread by an experienced sermon transcript proofreader/editor to ensure not just accuracy but consistency as well. We do our best to make sure all your transcripts look like they were transcribed by one person, even though in reality they will have been transcribed by multiple people with multiple styles.

Something To Keep In Mind

Some people think it will save them money if they pay a $1.00 - $1.50 transcription company to transcribe their files and then hire someone else to clean them up or to attempt to clean them up themselves. Most of the time, this isn't a productive strategy. When a client sends me sermon transcripts that were transcribed by a cheap transcription company and asks me to "fix" them, I usually turn the work down. Why? Because it takes longer to correct the transcripts than it takes to start over and transcribe them from scratch.