Writing books has become quite a trendy topic in the last couple of years, and for good reason! Books are high leverage business-builders. I’ve seen dozens of courses, books, webinars, and podcasts pop up around questions about publishing and marketing a book, like, Do I traditionally publish or self-publish? Do I need a book proposal? What do I do with my book once I’ve published it? How do I market my book? How do I become an Amazon #1 Bestseller?
You know what I think is missing from all of these questions?
You don’t have a book, yet.
The first and most important hurdle is actually writing the book.
We so easily surrender our money and precious time to finding out the answers to these peripheral questions, but at the end of the day, none of those answers matters a lick if you don’t have a book written.
Plus, a pet peeve of mine is that many of these courses, books, webinars, and podcasts, which are aimed at the publishing and marketing side of books, don’t help you to write a quality book. It’s almost as if the quality of the book doesn’t matter! Their advice for writing is very generic, like, “Create an outline and then write from the outline.” That’s going to help no one write a book.
My philosophy is that, yes, absolutely, you should write a book, and it should be the best, damned book you can write, at this moment in time.
If you’re going to bother writing, publishing, and marketing a book, if it’s going to be a long-term asset, if it’s going to give you a sense of accomplishment, you should write a book that reflects the best of who you are.
How do you write a quality book?
Writing a quality book doesn’t have to take years. You can write a quality book of 15,000-25,000 words in about three to four months. You just need to cultivate empowering mindset, develop a few productive writing habits, and invest in your book.
Cultivate an empowering mindset.
Writing is a mental battle that is won or lost in your own mind. Every writer struggles with self-doubt. When we’re alone, with our words, we start thinking, “Who am I to write a book? Why would anyone read this? Am I reallyexpert enough to write this?” I promise you, every.single.writer experiences these sorts of doubts.
You can reverse those doubts and turn them into an empowering mindset with one, powerful exercise. Write out every reason why you are capable, qualified, and worthy of writing this book. List out every childhood experience, every class, every conversation, every event, every connection that you have to the topic of this book. As you’re reading this, you may feel like your list will be short or nonexistent, but I would encourage you to just try it.
List five things. Everyone can list five reasons why they’re capable, qualified, and worthy of writing a book. And I’m willing to be that once you get the momentum started, you’ll come up with a heck of a lot more reasons. It feels pretty awesome to look back over that list, when those doubts creep in.
Develop a few productive writing habits.
I blog pretty extensively about writing habits, so let me give you a few of my all-time favorite resources:
- Write against a timer
- Practice free writing
- Track your writing progress
- Use deadlines and accountability
Invest in your book.
If you want this book to be valuable to the reader and to reflect the value you hold for yourself, then invest the time and the money into making it the best book it can be. Bring in an outside editor. Hire someone to design the cover. Get someone else to format and proofread. With all of the books being published now, professional design and editing are they best way to make your book stand head and shoulders above the crowded marketplace.
What to do now?
Start writing. Focus on just the writing. Put aside all the publishing and marketing questions for now, get yourself in tunnel vision, and start writing.