You Don’t HAVE to Write a Book
You Don’t HAVE to Write a Book
“A word after a word after a word is power.”
– Margaret Atwood
People tell you to write a book about something they have in mind from your life. You’ve said “yeah, maybe, I’ll consider the possibility of doing that” on some stand-out event or idea in your life.
Being totally honest, almost the last thing in the world you want to do is write a book! Maybe speaking and writing a book are tied for last place in the hierarchy of what would bring you pleasure, satisfaction, or joy.
Yet you continue seeing advertisements, hearing words of encouragement, and having that gnawing feeling inside that somehow, some way, you have no choice but to write a book. It could be you “want” to write a book. You really don’t see yourself doing so.
You’ve successfully stored this idea in that special mental vault that also holds defiance, excuses, logic, self-doubt, and other related obstacles and barriers. Would anyone even buy or read your book? For now, It’s in a sub-section of your mental archive labeled “Someday.”
Where’s the inspiration and endless uninterrupted time to throw yourself hook, line, and sinker into doing nothing in life besides writing a book? You envision waking up one day, with unbridled enthusiasm, ready to jump tall buildings in a single bound.
Here’s some great news. Ready? Unless you’re on a career path requiring you to write a book, you do not need to write one. Ah, that sigh of relief comes over the crowd. If you’re in academia or research, or few other professions, you do not NEED to write a book.
The alternative? Well, there’s lots of them. It depends on what you want to do to share your expertise. Here are three overarching possibilities that help clarify your “why.”
Establish credibility
Help people
Make Money
Even if you think your topic and expertise ONLY belong as a book, there are still ways around sitting down to write and publish (and market!) a book. And that doesn’t include spending zillions of dollars hiring a ghost writer who interviews you and writes the book FOR you.
You can record what would be the contents of your book. Make notes to guide you, and speak into your recording device as if you were having a conversation with someone. In fact, you could have a person interview you to make the process even easier… Get the recording professionally edited and you have a perfectly respectable audio book. You could even have the recording professionally transcribed, edited, sent to a good graphic designer, and made available as an eBook and even a printed book. Audio books are increasingly popular these days.
You could satisfy all three possible “why’s” to some degree based on how you distribute the various formats. And following that path you would not have to write a book! Just talk a lot. And pay to produce it. Then figure out how to market and sell it. Throw it onto Amazon and wish, hope, pray, and sprinkle pixie dust on it, no matter which format(s) you create? Probably minimal results without maximum effort. Yes, there’s learning curves even when delegating various functions.
You could also create a chapter at a time, or blog post one at a time, either of which can be compiled into a book. You could participate in a book that each of a dozen or more people write one chapter. These can be easier choices than writing an entire book and producing it all at once, plus did I mention marketing and selling it?
Today, you’re clear that a book is not something you want to do, no matter what input you’re receiving from within or outside of you. That doesn’t mean you’ll always feel the way you do today, or, you might.
In the meantime, a faster, easier, and less costly approach is to capture the how-to tips you continuously give away free any time you’re talking with people personally and/or professionally.
You can capture 52 tips that consistently roll off your tongue for however long you’ve been in your current area of expertise. The tips are used in different formats online and offline and are a great starting point for an entire product line.
Imagine taking those 52 tips and producing them as the following small sampling:
Booklets
Card decks
Weekly calendars
Jigsaw puzzles
Needlepoint sayings
Posters
T-shirts
DIGITAL
PDF e-booklets
Audio mp3s
Tips manuscripts
Crossword puzzles
Infographics
Drip-a-tip subscription
Video
Would creating these products (and many more) satisfy your “why?” Remember these?
Establish credibility
Help people
Make money
Do you think you’d have fun developing such a product line that demonstrates your credibility as a Subject Matter Expert? And can you imagine your products helping many more people by selling them in bulk to companies and associations who use your products to promote their own product, service, or cause? What about making you more money through bulk sales and content licensing? Selling many to one buyer rather than one copy at a time checks off all of your “why.”
And there is still room to write a book at some point if you are strongly driven to do so. It’ll be even easier to sell more copies of your book with these different tips products making you money and creating credibility for you; they’ll also serve as great marketing tools for your book!
Look at options you may have never considered or even knew before this article. Let’s chat about your next best steps. We’ve built lots of credibility since 1991 selling over two million copies of a tips booklet on organizing your business life, without a penny on advertising. We’ve helped many people by selling in bulk to companies and associations. And we’ve earned decent money this way. We can help you, too! Ready?
Book a call here NOW.
