Become an author – writing and publishing your own book

Become an author – Do you have expertise in an area? How about a flair for the dramatic? Maybe you have a Harry Potter rolling around in your head somewhere. While becoming a successful author can be somewhat difficult, many people do it every day. Some make a nice living at it and a few make a fortune at it.

We all hear the stories of the people who spend years authoring a book, only to submit it to the major publishing houses and get rejection after rejection. It’s enough to discourage many potential authors. Yet, why are there so many books? Any Barnes and Noble store carries thousands of authors, and even larger markets like Amazon and Barnes and Noble online carry even more authors. There are books on any subject you can find. There’s always room for one more.

Writing a book isn’t necessarily an easy project or one that goes quickly. Most authors will tell you they have a process they go through and it doesn’t start with tapping out keys on a keyboard. Authors spend time in research, develop notes and major points, they develop outlines, and chapter flow

Being author in a boom economy

One advantage to being an author in a boom economy is that publishers tend to take more risks on new authors. While people have a tendency to read less during a boom economy, they are often willing to spend more on books they don’t consider to be “important” to their lives.

Being an author in a bust economy

Like anything else, authors must target their consumers and provide a relevant product. Many books about living in tough economic times are published every time things get bad. People also tend to read more in tough economic times. This does not mean that every segment of book sales will do better, but some do.

How much money can I make?

You might make nothing – you might make millions. Being an author is part gamble, part hard work, but it almost always includes working very hard. Don’t expect to write a 100 page book and wait for the profits to roll in. Authors (and particularly self-published authors) spend a lot of time marketing their books.

How much you can make depends on how well you target your audience and how well your message resonates with the public. Can you get word of mouth going about your book? If you pick the wrong topic or rush a poorly written book through to publication, it will do poorly. All it takes is a few really lousy reviews to trash the future of a book. Conversely, a few really good reviews can really move a book along. Self publishing, on-demand businesses generally offer between 30-40% royalties on every book published.

Geographical limitations/differences

A great advantage of being an author is that it doesn’t matter where you do your writing. While there may be some advantage to living in a location where you can do a lot of research for certain kinds of books, this is not a rule that should be applied to writing in general.

Competitors

Competitors in the field of authorship don’t tend to follow hard rules. On a general sense, any book that a reader might buy other than yours would be considered a competitor, but it’s a hard argument to make stick in any real way. If you tend to write a particular kind of book, then a prolific author in that area like Danielle Steele might be your competitor, but it’s mostly a brand thing. If you were to develop a similarly strong author brand, it probably wouldn’t diminish Ms. Steele’s sales a bit.

Competitors in authorship might more easily be identified as those who would disagree with or criticize your books. A book that strikes a particular political pose or takes a philosophical position would potentially have competitors who would tend to prove that book or ideas expressed in it to be wrong. Successfully making a mockery of a particular author does far more damage to that person’s book sales than selling a similar book.

Another area of competition would be where there is a particularly tight niche. If you are looking to become the next expert in a specific area, those who occupy that position now might be less than receptive to your joining the crowd. Conversely, if you can land a coauthorship with one of these people, having your name on a book lends credibility to what you want to do next. Authors don’t like to bring on coauthors, but it does happen and it often means that they finish a text they would otherwise not finish.

A final area of competitor might be identified more as a thief than as a competitor. Plagiarism is a huge deal and not something that is easily identified or stopped. Those who would steal portions of your work can be hard to identify, and making them stop often means expensive litigation.

In fact it might be said that selling a similar book could actually enforce a buyer’s thoughts of buying it. In other words, if you like book A, then you would probably like book B.

Advertising your books

There are no shortages of places to sell books. The trick is getting your book into those locations so that it can be seen. This is a particularly hard task for new authors. Booksellers don’t care to bring in books that will just sit on the shelf and take up space that could be used to sell other books. They have to be convinced.

This is where self-publication comes in handy. If you self publish a book and show great sales, book publishers are more willing to take a chance on your product. That may or may not be true for your first book, but they will likely take a stronger look at your on the second book.

License Requirements

None apply - That said, one needs to be very careful when dealing with advice topics such as law and medicine. A publisher would tend to make sure that everyone is covered with the proper disclaimers. But if you self-publish, you need to make sure that you put all that language in there regarding the reader using your book as an educational instrument rather than as a guarantee or direct advice for their particular situation.

Authorship supplies

With a computer and an internet connection, you are set. It can’t get much cheaper than that.

Financial Requirements

Very few, but it does depend on your talents and what you want to risk. Hiring out people to complete your tasks, polish the book, proofread or edit, design graphics and covers, all cost money. If you can do this yourself to a professional end, then you are financially ahead of the game.

What to do next

Anyone who intends to start writing needs to start by coming up with ideas for a book and the process by which it will be done. Gather facts and do research as necessary and take copious notes. When you come up with good ideas, get them recorded in any way you can, as fast as you can. Ideas can disappear as fast as they arrived. Start keeping a notepad or voice recorder with you wherever you go to record these ideas and then expand them at the earliest possible moment.

Some authors have other means by which they develop, but getting ideas down in a recorded format will never be a bad way to start the writing process.

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Resources: Both of these resources will allow you to publish your own material and then you are in charge of advertising your book. They take charge of printing and distribution on “print on demand”.

Book Surge – for those who want help putting a book together. They will do editing, develop the graphics, and all the mundane work of developing the manuscript into a book.

www.booksurge.com

CreateSpace – for those who want to do all the work themselves