Sneak Preview: Personal Excellence Book (Pre-Order Starts 18 July, Sunday)
by Celes | 
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Those of you who follow my Twitter and Facebook updates would know I’ve been busy working on my upcoming book in the past week. This book, titled Personal Excellence Book, is a compilation of 120 premium, personal development articles written by me, which includes 110 articles from the blog as well as 10 new, never seen before bonus articles.
The contents in this book are the result of 2 years and thousand hours of real hard work writing, tireless labor, late nights, distilling of my best life learnings for you and passion to live our best life. If you’re serious about your personal growth (which I assume you are if you’re reading this blog), you really cannot miss this book, and I’m not just saying this. At over 700 pages and 120 in-depth articles, it’s your essential handbook to pursue personal growth and live your best life.
Update Sep 21 ’11 – An all-new version of Personal Excellence Book has been released! It now comes with separate volumes, with each volume containing the best 101 articles of Personal Excellence in its respective year(s). Read more: Personal Excellence Book – The Very Best of Personal Excellence
By the way, this will be an ebook and not a hard copy book. There are 3 reasons:
- It’s the most efficient way to release a book to all of you especially since Personal Excellence has a large international reader base (over 70% are from outside Singapore)
- At over 700 pages (A4 size, no less), the printing costs would be insane. The price of the book would barely be sufficient to cover the printing. Not to mention it’s also going to be thicker than any reference book out there :roll: . Also, it’ll be environmental friendly (imagine all the trees we’ll be killing just to print 1 book!!).
- Ebook / PDF is a perfectly great format to release this book. You can read it anywhere on the computer and with your ebook reader if you have one.
This is my first product ever since starting the blog and I’m really excited about it. 
I’ve been working on it day after day, putting the articles together, writing the new articles, sourcing for appropriate, high quality images to improve the reading experience, working on the layout, cover design, benchmarking against others’ ebooks to make sure you get the best quality, among others. I’ve taken special care to ensure the look of the book is consistent with the look of the blog too. It has been really, really enjoyable and I can’t wait till it’s finally out.
Right now, it’s almost ready for release. I’d say it’s about 95% done. Remaining 5% includes finishing up the remaining articles, writing the product launch page, setting up the affiliate program and payment system, final sourcing for images and tidying up the nitty gritty details.
Sneak Preview
Last week I promised to give some update on the blog and today I’m here to give you a sneak preview of what’s been going on behind the scenes:
Working on the book cover design in Photoshop. This is pretty much the final design. All the book design and layout of PEBook is done by me.
(The lovely book image is © Horia Varlan)
Personal Excellence Book – Your handbook to live your best life 
Table of contents. Since there are 120 articles, the contents page ended up being 5 pages long!!
I’ve categorized the articles into 9 key categories for easy browsing. The categories are: Purpose & Meaning, Awareness & Growth, Passion & Dreams, Goals & Success, Cultivating Life Transforming Habits, Emotional Mastery, People Skills/Relationships, Maximizing Productivity and Inspirational Quotes.
A sneak peek at the insides of the book… This article is “Discover Your Values” and guides you through the topic of life values and how to discover your values. It’s one of the new bonus articles written specially for the book, with 3,000+ words and 9 pages long.
A few shots of other pages in the book.
The above is just a sneak peak. Expect a whole lot more information on PEBook come launch day.
PEBook Launch Date: 25 July (Sunday)
I’ve set to launch the book officially on 25 July, Sunday. That’s next week so be sure to mark your calendars! That’s when the (e)book will go live on the blog and other sites (I plan to have it on sales on Kindle and iTunes store too) and everyone can start purchasing. On 25 July, you’ll see an official announcement blog update with all the details and link to purchase the book.
By the way, Singapore time is ahead of US and Western World, so if you live in US or WW, keep a lookout for the announcement on the book come 24 July your time.
Special Pre-sales Offer on 18 July (Sunday) – For Newsletter Subscribers Only
I’ll be having a special pre-sales exclusive to newsletter subscribers exactly 1 week before the launch. Pre-sales meaning you’ll be given the chance to get your hands on the book before anyone else. There’ll also be a discount off the original price for the early birds. This pre-sales offer will be only valid to ONLY the 1st 25 buyers and is on a 1st come 1st serve basis.
Be sure you’re on the Personal Excellence newsletter so you don’t miss out on this offer. If you haven’t signed up already, quickly sign-up here, check your mail and confirm the subscription right away. The pre-sales announcement will be sent to all subscribers on 18 July 2010, which is this coming Sunday.
Please Support Me
This is my 1st ever product and I hope it’s the first to many more. If you found the articles on the blog helpful to your personal growth and journey in life, this book will be really be invaluable to you. I hope all of you can support me and buy a copy when it’s out. I have no idea how it’s going to do or anyone is even going to buy it, but I’m surely excited to see what happens next. Till then, wait for the pre-sales newsletter from me on 18 July :D.
Update 27 Jul ’10: Personal Excellence Book is now officially available for purchase! You can get your copy here: Personal Excellence Book.
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| Filed in: Awareness & Growth, Career & Work, Cultivate Habits, Emotional Mastery, Goals & Success, Healthy Living, Money & Wealth, Motivation & Inspiration, Passion & Dreams, People Skills, Productivity & GTD, Purpose & Meaning, Relationships, Singlehood & Dating, Spirituality, Updates | Posted on Jul 13 2010 | |
Congratulations Celestine! It looks great. Wishing much success with your book.
YOu already have one customer here! Where did you get your book designed???
Thanks jon!
As mentioned in the post, I designed the book. Be sure to sign up for the newsletter if you haven’t so you get informed of the pre-sale on 18 July (this coming Sunday!)
Really…? You designed yourself? OMG…
….it’s beautifully designed!
I like the design. =)
Anyway, am looking forward to your book (a whopping 700 pages?), man, now that’s a read!
Thanks a lot Nigel for your kind comments!
I made sure the design / look is consistent with the blog (white with maroon as accentuating color). The final design has additional maroon strips on the pages – it’ll go shared on the 18th.
[...] Update @ 13 July: Get the sneak preview of Personal Excellence Book here! [...]
can we book the book from major bookstore?
hey meimei! As it’s an ebook, it won’t be listed in the brick & mortar stores. I’ll be selling it directly from the blog so you can make your order here :). I’ll be setting up a pre-order list in a few days’ time so stay tuned!
This looks excellent Celes, you must be so excited after all your hard work that the book is so close to completion and your readers will be able to benefit from it. I believe ebooks are the way forward, the three reasons you give make perfect sense and I know traditional publishers are suffering. With your ebook people will be able to get instant access to your advice without waiting for a hard copy to be delivered. Sometimes when you need help you need it right now!
This is going to be a brilliant resource and I can’t wait to read it. Keep up the great work :wink:
Thanks so much Annabel!
I’m really excited about this and can’t wait till it’s out. Pre-sales start this Sunday and I’m a little apprehensive yet enthusiastic at the same time on how it’s going to do. It’s definitely the first milestone to many more in the future :-P
Yes Celestine
Usually it’s the first time that’s the toughest, and the most apprehensive and worrisome, but after a few…we’d just be like,
“I’ve this book launching in this month, this movie the next, the next book promotion 3 months after etc…”
Have fun learning and implementing! Sounds good, would love to see you keep churning out your high quality content! =)
Haha Nigel, you nailed it there. It’s also the first time that’s the most exciting too :D. I look forward to more products/books/service created in love to come after this too.
By the way welcome to the blog! Look forward to connecting!
Congratulations!!! I am so excited to read your book!!! Im so happy and proud of you!!! Great talent there!!! thanks for being our mentor!!! towards achieving a great life!!!
:-P
Thanks Laine for your support! I hope you like the book and feel free to share me your feedback after you get a copy
Looks great Celes, design, content and over all value gives of a great impression. The best wishes for selling many copies!
Looks great Celes.. one thing I’m somewhat weary of is the length. To me 700 pages seems a bit bloated. Thoughts on this?
Hey Bud
If the book is only on 1 subject matter (e.g. how to cultivate habits, how to achieve goals, etc), 700 pages will indeed be an overkill. But in this case the 700 pages is made up of 125 different articles on different topics on living one’s best life (including discovering one’s purpose, goal achievement strategies, people skills, cultivating habits, etc). You can easily select the articles relevant to you from the contents page then start reading. It’s not intended to be read at one go but as a guide throughout life. Hence handbook for life. 
Hey Celes,
Nice to see you have created your first product:)
It’s a lot of hard work, I’ve been working on mine for the last 3 months. Launch date is the same as yours. Congrats on doing all the design work yourself, design is really hard!
Best of luck and may all your readers buy a copy:)
Cheers
Diggy
Thanks Diggy! All the best for your launch too
Hey Celestine,
Really looking forward to the launch and I’m going to be one of the 1st 25 ppl to grab it. The reason is because I’ve been reading your posts and have already gotten so much out of them and so having a book as a resource all in one place would be perfect for me!
Just wanted to say well done for doing your first product launch and I hope it all goes well. Also, thank you for all the great content you’ve already been giving, it really has been much appreciated.
I’m sure they will be flying of the (virtual) shelves!
Bailey
Aw thanks Bailey, that’s really the sweetest thing you could ever say to me. :oops: I really appreciate your kind words and support – thanks so much. I’m working on the final touches of the book now and it’ll be finalized by end of today. Sunday will be when the pre-sales notice is released in the newsletter, and once the 1st 25 people make their purchases the pre-order will kick-off.
I’m excited and I hope everyone is too
:-P
Awesome, cant wait to buy it
Thanks for your support John!
[...] tool in your personal growth and journey to become your highest self. If you haven’t seen the sneak preview, here’s a lowdown on what’s in The Personal Excellence [...]
Looks Fantastic Celestine! Congratulations and best of Luck!