Let the lemming’ gene direct your day-to-day life or not. If you decide to be a writer, start working hard and find your own voice.
The lemming gene and the writer’s choice of a premise
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Bestseller by the end of the week
One week bestsellers have years of work to support them. Not only in honing your writing skills, but in making yourself known as a person who is worth reading. It’s the snowball effect that you should be focused on.
The day your book is read
Think about it while you write and strive to create an exceptional read, to offer a life changing experience.
The meaning of literary genre
Literary genre is used by bookstores to separate books into different sections. It’s also a matter of life and death for many readers/writers to assign a genre or not to the book of another writer.
What do you wear when you write?
You’re a writer. An artist. You use words to enhance people’s emotions and teleport them in the imaginary universe you’re building. Maybe your mind will work better if your body follows.
The pragmatic writer’s guide to the publishing houses ecosystem
Before putting all your hopes into the standard publishing industry and spend years discovering the romantic side of rejection letters here is some tough love you should deal with:
The best time to write your book
The best time to write was before you opened your browser, visited this website, and read this article.
How much is your book worth to you?
How much will you ask for it? Is it a book as an entity priceless?
A writer promotes to writers
The copy/paste action in a writer’s group is a waste of time and energy you will never get back. Total waste. Mass marketing like this is expensive even if you don’t realize now.
What’s in it for you?
Why do you write? Why do you breathe? Why do you wake up in the morning? What’s in it for you?
Good advice
There goes out the window the general definition for good advice. I care not if is critique or feedback, or just mean and cynical advice. If it motivates me to keep doing what I do is good enough for me.
We’re in the storytelling business
Don’t deceive yourself. You’re not just telling stories. You’re telling stories and getting paid for it.
Would you buy a book because…
Would you really buy a book because…
Everyone else is reading it?
It has thousands of 5* reviews on Amazon?
You think the person who wrote the 1* review is an idiot which means the book is good?
One of your friends wrote it?
You like the cover?
What it takes to become a writer?
Unyielding work ethic
Building a start-up means you have to decide what you will do and also what you won’t. Believe in your dream, work day and night and never compromise. It sounds difficult because it is. I can vouch for this with every night when I wake up searching my notepad under the bed to write an idea.
There isn’t any writer consumed by the drive to write who doesn’t understand what I wrote above.
The publishing Big Five dilemma
The Big Five publishing houses produce almost 60% of the English-language books and thousands of small publishing houses and self-published authors produce the rest. The turnover and the rate of failure of the little guys are huge.
The break-even point for book sales and the professional writer’s journey
One of the first question I receive when I talk with business people about project management tools for writers and about all the money and work hours that go into building Asengana is: “What’s your break-even point?”
I applied the same answer for the process of writing, publishing, and selling a book. It will be a back-of-the-envelope type calculation, but I will provide you with the document to download and add as many variables as you need.
The buying part is easy
To get your reader there is the hard part. There’s nothing easy in addressing numerous potential buyers. Readers aren’t just readers.
What were you working on while the top ten authors on Amazon wrote their book?
What are you doing this year, month, day? Are you writing? Because if you’re not working hard to make your dreams come true nobody will care in five years from now what you did today.
A beta reader review – Wise Guy: Lessons from a Life
This book is a genuine face to face with Guy, sitting on the beach, listening to the waves and his voice telling his life story as is. No filter, no excuses, no holding back.
Don’t ask anybody if you should write a book or not
Do you really care if your friend, or an expert, or anybody that reads a few pages of your book thinks you should quit? Does really helps you if they say you should keep writing? When you’re alone with your keyboard, paper page, or recorder, does it really matter if the others support you or not?
Enchanting the beta reader
How open are you to the suggestions made by the beta readers of your book? How much of their input are you willing to accommodate in your rewriting process? How do you thank them and make them feel special when their ideas become part of your idea?
The dangerous long-term memory of your potential readers
If you are one that doesn’t understand that a writers’ group is about writing, and your opinions are full of hate and disrespect for others your book launch might be closer to failure than you think…