In the concluding part of my article How I Wrote 40,000 Words In 10 Days, I said, in Part 2 of this article, we will look deeper into how you can hammer out a neat readable book within 30 days or go from a book concept to your book launch in 90 days. At 40,000 words, my articles are pretty long enough for a full fledged book. You too can do the same, and not only launch your book, but turn your book into a lucrative business.
Initially I was skeptical when Chandler Bolt of Self Publishing School asserted that he’d written a book in 45 days. Then he further asserted you can even do it in 30 days.
It was not until three years later when I wrote my Wealth Beyond Your Imagination – It’s Up To You, that I became a convert. That book or booklet is 29 pages long and has a total word count of 8,529.
I wrote the book in three hours and had it converted to audio format in a studio right in Lagos. The paperback sells at $7.48 and E-book sells at $3.99 all on Amazon.
First, don’t forget if you wanted to travel from the UK to the US in the 18th Century, you’d probably spend three months at sea. Today the journey takes less than 6 hours. With Concord, it was two and half hours.
So technology has compressed time. Things that used to take months to do can be done today in hours. You can microwave your food in minutes.
So gone are the days you needed years to write a book. Today with self publishing technologies you can complete a book and put it on sale on Amazon and start making money within days.
Those that really understand how the Amazon ecosystem, or more appropriately, the book publishing ecosystem, works, are making a kill dancing all the way to the bank.
These guys have dozens of books under their belt. The likes of Ryan Holiday, Chandler Bolt, Ty Cohen are masters of the game.
Your book doesn’t necessarily have to be 200 pages. As a matter of fact, the shorter and more focused your book, the better the return on your investment.
And you don’t have to handle the chore of writing all by yourself. There are always ghost writers hanging in the shadows to carry the heavy load on your behalf if writing scares you.
Though some of these short works may not qualify as perennials or evergreens as defined by Ryan Holiday, but think about evergreens such as Rich Dad Poor Dad, Who Moved My Cheese, and Prayer of Jabez, how really long are the books?
So it all depends on what you put between the book’s covers and not how long it is. As I said earlier, the shorter and more focused your book on providing solutions, the better.
For instance, if I’m stranded in a desert and you’re able to provide me with a compass that can lead me to the nearest oasis, don’t you think I’d be willing to pay you any amount no matter how short your book is?
So think in terms of the solution you’re providing each time you sit down to write your best seller. Research your target audience’s pain points and aspirations and home in with a solution and you’d hit the bull’s eye.
Writing a book is not as daunting as you might think. It requires a few steps. But the most critical step is getting out all the ideas you have about the book. This is the mind mapping stage or simply the brainstorming stage. From there you draw up your book’s outline and you’re home and dry.
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So how do you turn your book into a lucrative business? Here are seven things you should do with gusto, not necessarily in any particular order:
Think Five Books
The end of your first book should be the beginning of your second book and so on. The needle will begin to move in your favour by the time you hit five books. Here are three examples:
Tom Peters: In Search of Excellence, Thriving on Chaos, A Passion For Excellence (with Nancy Austen), Liberation Management, and Tom Peters Seminars.
Daniel Pink: Free Agent Nation, A Whole New Mind, Drive, To Sell Is Human and When.
Malcolm Gladwell: Outliers, The Tipping Point, Blink, What The Dog Saw, and David and Goliath,
So you need to be prodigious in output. The biggest names out there – Tim Ferriss, Ryan Holiday, Chandler Bolt – in addition to the titans I earlier cited have at least five books to their names.
Of course you can write one book and it becomes a mega global bestseller like John Gray’s Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus. But your chances in that regard are very slim. So focus on writing many books. Five is the minimum you should aim at to see the needle turn in your favour.
Build a Tribe
If you do it well you’ll get followers, fans, admirers or tribe as Seth Godin calls it. Seth has written more than 10 books and his tribe runs in the thousands. I’m one of his tribe members. Your tribe members will snap up everything you write further expanding your coast and influence.
Reach out to other influencers
You cannot afford to be a hermit living in a cave. As you write more books your influence will begin to grow. To accelerate your influence, reach out to other influencers, authors and platforms to share your message, ideals and insights.
Take a long term view
It’s hard to become an overnight success so take a long-term view of 18 to 36 months. One of the biggest phenomenal brands is Tim Ferris. He wrote five mega best sellers in 10 years (2007 and 2017). But it took Tim three years from being a virtual unknown to a celebrity, thanks to his first two best sellers: The 4-Hour Work Week (2007) and The 4-Hour Body (2010).
Invest In Yourself
It goes without saying you need to massively invest in yourself. Prior to launching his first book, Tim Ferriss, by his own account, attended over 100 conferences, not only to sharpen his saw, but to build alliance partners. Investing in yourself will include learning to speak professionally. Think of Toastmasters International as the place to begin. Prepare to speak at TEDx.
Think Big
What I have found out is this – making it BIG is not a walk through the park. You must invest time, energy, and passion. As Peter Diamandis says, if you want to be a Billionaire, impact one billion people. I’d say, be modest. Aim to impact 10,000 people, then scale to 100,000, then scale to one million. When you reach one million, everything will tip in your favour.
Tom Peters once admonished those who cared to listen, You Can’t Shrink To Greatness! It rings true to eternity. How does your thinking small benefit humanity?
In 1959 David J. Schwartz Jr. wrote a timeless book, The Magic of Thinking Big. Get it, read it. You’ll get goose pimples when you do. Our minds are powerful beyond measure. If only you knew how to tap its power.
Put up a blog to share your message
If you’re scared of being dubbed a blogger, start with a website. Having a blog is one of the ways to build a tribe, reach out to other influencers, thinking big and invest in yourself.
Again, you can’t shrink to greatness. Not only has Tim Ferriss written five mega bestsellers, he runs one of the biggest podcasts on the planet, The Tim Ferriss Show or Bullet Friday, with over one million listeners weekly.
If you take these seven bold actions: Put Up Blog To Share Your Message, Think Big, Invest In Yourself, Take A Long Term View, Reach Out To Other Influencers, Build A Tribe, Think Five Books, you’ll be far ahead of all the other writers who write one book and do nothing next. You’d have moved from being a writer to an author, and to an influencer, who has turned his craft into business. The question is, when will you begin your journey?