Writing a book is a fabulous way of establishing your expertise. If all your competitors give out a business card when they visit or communicate with their marketplace, and you give out the book you’ve written, which of the two competitors is your prospect more likely to choose?
Are they more likely to choose the one that doesn’t look as if they’re an expert or the one who does? Writing a book gives you an edge and a distinction. It positions you head and shoulders above your competitors. And it’s fun to do. But where do you start? One of the options is to publish your own book.
Here in this guest post our good friend Dee Blick describes how she wrote and self-published her first book. Dee is an award winning marketer; Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Marketing; and speaker and weekly columnist for the Financial Mail. She is also author of the best selling self-published book: Powerful Marketing On A Shoestring Budget For Small Businesses:
I remember as a little girl being asked what I wanted to do when I grew up. My response? I wanted to write a book. I loved writing, still do and the thought of a person reading my work and being inspired to take action and improve their business is what drives me to this day.
And so, 40 years later and here I am with my first published book and number two waiting in the wings. If your dream is to write a book and you’ve never quite made it I hope that my story inspires you to turn that dream into a reality.
How did I start?
I made the decision to self publish my first book and I’m doing the same with my second book. Don’t think of self publishing as a poor cousin. It’s come on in leaps and bounds in the last few years and with digital print on demand it’s environmentally friendly and cost-effective. An increasing number of literary agents are now advising authors to self publish, simply because to land a publishing deal, you either have to be very lucky with a strong link to a publisher or, you have to fall into that dubious category of celebrity, cashing in on either your fleeting or long-standing fame. Why tout your manuscript around publishers suffering the ignominy of rejection when you can self publish? What’s more with Amazon now levelling out the playing field between self published and traditionally published authors, it’s open to all of us. (By way of illustration, I recently came back from holiday to find that Amazon had e-mailed thousands of people recommending five business books, with mine being at number one and incidentally the only self published book out of the five)
I appointed a specialist self publishing publisher. I wanted to focus on writing my book, not on having to organise the entire publishing process. In the event, it cost £1,000 which I recouped at my book launch. Because my book is about marketing the costs were classed as a business expense. The great thing about self publishing is that your royalties tend to be higher than if you go down the traditional publishing route. Because I sell many books direct at signings and events as well as through Amazon, I have managed to make a healthy profit on my book and it has paid for itself many times over.
So, having made the momentous decision to self publish the biggest challenge lay as you would expect, in the actual writing. I have been very fortunate in that I have won many national media awards for my marketing articles in the last 26 years. I naïvely assumed that writing a book would be as straightforward as writing an article for a magazine and so initially did not allow sufficient time. I had to pull out all the stops to get my book to the publishers on time. However much time you think you will need to write your book, double it.
I found that having an editor; a person with the balls to actually pull me up on grammar and punctuation and to question my integrity on content was vital. My book went from being very good to great simply because my editor was not afraid to challenge me. With the best will in the world, you will have days when the writing simply flows and it’s a joy. On other days, it’s like pulling teeth!
I also learned that with the right positive mindset I could move mountains. I discovered strength within me that I didn’t know existed. I wrote my book whilst also running a very demanding full-time marketing business and having to handle chronic repetitive strain injury in my arms and shoulders. Don’t talk yourself into not writing your book simply because you don’t think you have the time. If you’re driven and tenacious you will find it. I used to visualise myself signing hundreds of books at my book launch and reaching the bestselling ranks on Amazon. These thoughts motivated me on days when the idea of mooching round the shops was more attractive than tackling a challenging chapter. At a practical level I motivated myself by organising my book launch and giving my publishers a fixed date for my final manuscript. Set goals and visualise your success.
It has been a rollercoaster of a ride. I’ve spent more hours than I care to mention self promoting my book but it has been worth it. Four months of initial hard slog, sending my book for critic reviews and finding any PR opportunity to hang my message on. I have been interviewed by the Financial Times, Royal Mail, The Mail on Sunday and countless business magazines and had some amazing critic reviews. I now write a weekly marketing column for the Financial Mail and no end of positive opportunities are now being laid at my door simply because I’ve written a book that has become a modest bestseller. But nothing, absolutely nothing compares with the feeling I get when receiving an e-mail from a reader who has bought my book and they’re writing to tell me how I have benefited their business. That really is, to quote the advert, priceless.
So where are you now with your book?
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Great Guest Post! I agree, self-publishing is a marvelous way to get your work out there, and make money from your books.
I have been self-publishing since the late 1980′s, and my parents were self-publishers before that. Over the years, I wrote 17 books, and sold 2 million+ copies in 20 languages. The most important part of my success was not the writing (which I think is excellent!) but the marketing. I was so intrigued by your Guest’s story, because apparently, this is the key to her success as well.
However, many authors think that a Regular Publisher will do the marketing for them. These days, that is certainly not so. Publishers do not spend money on new authors. In order to sell books, ANY author – traditionally published or self-published, fiction or non-fiction, is almost totally responsible for a book’s sales volume. So, why not self-publish and keep the majority of the money.
With the internet, and the fractionalization of markets today, the smart author finds a niche, and writes for it. As one of my podcasts says “There are riches in the niches”. Your Guest learned this quickly (or more likely, as a marketing expert, knew it beforehand)
One more comment, and again, it is reflected by your Guest, don’t stop at one book. In fact, don’t stop with books. Build your community of Buyers, Readers and Influencers by sharing ideas in a multi-media format. Produce CD’s, blogs, workbooks, etc. Sell them all! Look for the niches where the people celebrate you, and go deep.
Bill,
What can I say. What a fabulous comment. Thank you so much. You’re clearly very experienced in this area, I really appreciate everything you’ve shared, and I shall look forward to getting to know you going forward.
Your comments remind me so much of Bob Morrison, who has owned over 100 businesses, and self-published numerous business books, becoming a great inspiration to me over the past 20 years. Bob’s best selling book sold, I believe, some 700,000 copies from the mid 1970’s to the late 1990’s. It was titled “Why S.O.B.’s Succeed and nice people fail in any business.” Every single copy sold direct, and he was a fabulous marketer. I learned a great deal from him, much of which I still haven’t applied.
I think that I, and many other people reading this post, can learn a lot from you too, Bill. Once again thanks so much.
A great article by Dee and an excellent comment by Bill.
When I wrote my first book last year, I also choose the self publishing route, and it wasn’t anywhere near as complex as I thought it would be.
But for me it was the experience of the writing which I found most interesting…
I’d never considered myself as a writer before – even though I have written a lot over the years – but I was surprised how easy the process was when I followed a fairly simple formula.
1. Create an outline – what do you want to write about? Divide it into topics – these can become chapters.
2. Create bullets for each chapter – what do you want to include in each chapter/part.
3. Now start to write the first draft – flesh out the bullets into sentences.
4. Don’t worry about “correctness” to begin with – grammar, punctuation etc., it can stop your flow of writing – these can be corrected later in the process, as there will be an element of rewriting anyway.
5. Write as if you are talking to a particular person – especially important if what you are writing is of a technical or specialist nature.
6. Set yourself a target to write something every day – I have a set number of words I write everyday, but you can set a time limit if you prefer. Try NOT to stop writing during that time, and stay away from distractions like the phone, email or anything else which may disturb the flow. It does become easier when it becomes more of a habit rather than a “chore”.
7. Put it away – once you have written the first draft, leave it for 2 or 3 days to get your mind off it – you then go back with fresh eyes.
8. Read it aloud – If you read it out loud to yourself you will pick up errors with the flow – if you stumble over a particular sentence or chapter, then chances are the reader will as well.
9. Get a few people to read it for you – ideally include someone who is a good proofreader or has edited books before – they can quite often help you with explanations of things which aren’t clear as well as grammatical and spelling errors.
10. Enjoy the process! If you don’t enjoy it, it will come across in your writing and will have an impact on the end result.
Dee makes some very good points, but the two that stand out here for me are:
1. Get yourself an Editor or at least a proof reader. When you are writing as much as you are, you do become very close to your work, and you can suffer from ‘mistake-blindness’
2. Will-power. No busy business professional has the time to write a book, so you have to MAKE time. By following the simple process above, I was able to easily get my book written, edited, proofread and off to the printers within 3 weeks – start to finish.
My second book is in the pipeline, and it nowhere near as daunting as the first was, but I also think Bill makes an excellent point… you need to re-purpose your content as much as you can, so turn your book into an audio book, get yourself interviewed about it, turn it into a study course, create a DVD about it… all things relatively easy to do once you know what the topic is!
Great article.
.-= Jez Hunt´s last blog ..How Do YOU Communicate With Your Customers? =-.
Jez,
Again, a wonderful in-depth comment that sheds more light on the whole writing process. I really appreciate it. And so will others who read this piece. Thanks so much.