Should I Write a Book?
A lot of people feel that they have a book in them but never quite get round to actually writing it.
Usually because they are continually mulling the question "Should I write a book?" around in their mind rather than actually making a decision one way or the other.
Procrastination is often our biggest enemy and that applies as much to writing books as it does to anything else in our lives.
If you can answer yes to at least one of these reasons then you should get off the fence and start to plan and write your book now.
1.
Are a professional in your field? If you've been working in your area for any length of time, chances are that you are a professional and have a lot of knowledge that other people don't have.
As a general rule, we tend to believe that someone is an expert much more if they are a published author.
Think about this for a minute: if you were choosing between two different professionals in the same field and one of them handed you a copy of their book (or maybe even just mentioned that they were a published author) then that person automatically has more authority.
After all, if they have published a book on the subject then they must be an expert.
What this means is that the moment you publish your book, even if the only people ever to have bought a copy are members of your immediate family, you are much more of an expert than someone who hasn't taken the time to get published themselves.
2.
Do you have knowledge to share? It used to be the case that, with the possible exception of academic tomes, you needed a mass market in order to become a published author.
Nowadays you can use electronic books such as Amazon's Kindle.
You can also use print on demand services that quite literally only print a perfect copy of your book if someone places an order.
This means that books can cater for much smaller markets than ever before.
You probably wouldn't want to write a book if the entire potential worldwide market was in single figures.
But so long as more than a handful of people worldwide are potentially interested in your subject or story then sharing your knowledge in book format is something that you can do.
And because there's no stock to hold, the only investment is your time and maybe some artwork for your book's cover.
3.
Do you just want to be a published author? This actually leads on from the second point.
Sometimes writing a book is a simple matter of getting the idea out of your system.
The number of classified adverts that offer vanity publishing services means that there are still a lot of people who just want to get their name in print.
The advantage of self-publishing your book over vanity publishing is the difference in cost.
Self publishing is an order of magnitude cheaper.
You can still order one-off or low quantities of your finished book so that you can show it off to friends, family and anyone else who will give you the time of day.
And, who knows, you may even sell some copies of your brand new book to other people around the world and maybe even build up your own fan club.
Usually because they are continually mulling the question "Should I write a book?" around in their mind rather than actually making a decision one way or the other.
Procrastination is often our biggest enemy and that applies as much to writing books as it does to anything else in our lives.
If you can answer yes to at least one of these reasons then you should get off the fence and start to plan and write your book now.
1.
Are a professional in your field? If you've been working in your area for any length of time, chances are that you are a professional and have a lot of knowledge that other people don't have.
As a general rule, we tend to believe that someone is an expert much more if they are a published author.
Think about this for a minute: if you were choosing between two different professionals in the same field and one of them handed you a copy of their book (or maybe even just mentioned that they were a published author) then that person automatically has more authority.
After all, if they have published a book on the subject then they must be an expert.
What this means is that the moment you publish your book, even if the only people ever to have bought a copy are members of your immediate family, you are much more of an expert than someone who hasn't taken the time to get published themselves.
2.
Do you have knowledge to share? It used to be the case that, with the possible exception of academic tomes, you needed a mass market in order to become a published author.
Nowadays you can use electronic books such as Amazon's Kindle.
You can also use print on demand services that quite literally only print a perfect copy of your book if someone places an order.
This means that books can cater for much smaller markets than ever before.
You probably wouldn't want to write a book if the entire potential worldwide market was in single figures.
But so long as more than a handful of people worldwide are potentially interested in your subject or story then sharing your knowledge in book format is something that you can do.
And because there's no stock to hold, the only investment is your time and maybe some artwork for your book's cover.
3.
Do you just want to be a published author? This actually leads on from the second point.
Sometimes writing a book is a simple matter of getting the idea out of your system.
The number of classified adverts that offer vanity publishing services means that there are still a lot of people who just want to get their name in print.
The advantage of self-publishing your book over vanity publishing is the difference in cost.
Self publishing is an order of magnitude cheaper.
You can still order one-off or low quantities of your finished book so that you can show it off to friends, family and anyone else who will give you the time of day.
And, who knows, you may even sell some copies of your brand new book to other people around the world and maybe even build up your own fan club.
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