Want to Write Books? Here Are 4 Things You Need to Know

Authoring and publishing a book can do wonders for launching a business. By writing a book, you are providing knowledge and information to people. Additionally, a book is a low-ticket item for clients to get started with that helps them develop trust in you. So do you want to seriously write a book? While books do have these advantages for your brand and business, there are a few things you need to know before getting started.

Write Books to Boost Your Business

In this article:

• 1. Don’t shift focus away from what you mainly do in order to write a book.
• 2. There’s no such thing as spare time.
• 3. Writing a book is useless; selling a book is useful.
• 4. Test the topic first.

Unfortunately, while many people attempt to write books, most people go about it the wrong way or pursue it for the wrong reasons. If you love writing and just want to write, then write! But if you’re looking to make money off of a book, then that’s a whole different game.

Here are four things you need to know before you even think of getting started writing a book.

1. Don’t shift focus away from what you mainly do in order to write books.

Potential authors tend to think, “I’ve got to have a front-end piece, and a book is a good idea, so I’m going to take a year off to write. Then I’ll come back strong!”

That’s dumb. Do you know how I know? Because I almost did that.

Even if this process was supposed to help me creatively, in actuality it put nothing but stress on me financially. Do you know what the writing was like? Crap. Why? Because it had to work right away, since I was broke and wasn’t making any money.

Don’t put that stress on yourself. Whatever you’ve got going, keep it going. Don’t quit your day job until you are financially free enough to do so.

2. There’s no such thing as spare time.

Find me someone who’s got spare time, and I’ll show you someone who’s got broke time.

The fact is, there’s no such thing as spare time. You have to make the time for writing as if it’s another job. Say to yourself, “Instead of a vacation this year, I’m going to do a book writing vacation.”

If that doesn’t work, make Friday your book writing day. Or on Wednesdays, instead of watching four television programs, you watch two, and then you take two hours to write. Make quality use of your time, and you can write a book in a reasonable amount of time while still attending to your other responsibilities.

3. Writing a book is useless; selling a book is useful.

If writing a book is healing for you, if you simply enjoy writing, that’s great. Do it. However, if you actually want it to do something from a business side, writing a book is basically useless. Instead, selling is where you’ll find use and value as a business.

Selling a book is a whole different matter as far as being useful and effective. Writing is one skill — selling and marketing another. The beauty of it is, you can combine both no matter what field you’re in!

No matter your industry, you can write and sell a book. Even if you’re selling fricking lighting and furniture, write a book about that! You’ll be known as the expert and people will come to you to buy furniture and lighting. People want to do business with experts.

4. Test the topic first.

Before you begin using valuable resources to sell your book, why don’t you start with something shorter and easier to market? For example, test whether people like and want what you have to offer with an e-book.

Instead of writing a 180 or a 250-page book and speculating on whether or not it’ll sell, why don’t you start with a 25-page report and try to sell that for $5, $10 or $20?

If your report can’t sell speaking and coaching, then guess what? Your e-book and your book won’t either. You might as well start with something you can write in one freaking night and market tomorrow instead of spending a year and a half of fooling around, writing a book, and getting a publisher to find out you can’t actually sell the product.

 

Remember, this advice isn’t meant to discourage. All I’m recommending is that you do a little thinking and planning before you start something that could end up being a waste of time, effort, and money.

Do you have experience in writing that sold? What kinds of ideas have you come up with to use written material as tools to promote or sell your business or service? Any successful (or even semi-successful) creative writers out there? What’s your experience in that area financially speaking?

Share your stories…we want to hear from you!

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