In this week’s episode of the Extra Paycheck Podcast we’re talking about writing your own book.
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Most people dreamed of writing their own book at some point and I am pretty sure this includes you. At the same time, most people have never accomplished that dream. It’s understandable, writing a book is extremely hard and time consuming.
Writing a book is a possibility for everyone but you must have a good reason to do it otherwise you’ll fail miserably or simply give up after a few paragraphs. I know several people who did write a book because they wanted to make millions of dollars in royalties. Others wrote book because they wanted to become super famous authors and lead a “writer’s lifestyle” (think Hank Moody from Californication). The reality is that these are horrible reasons for taking on such task. A person who is planning on writing a book in order to make millions is pretty much guaranteed to fail. If I remember correctly over 200,000 new books are published yearly in the US and only 20-30 make it to the top. Don’t quote me on that but those are the numbers that I remember.
These are of course my own opinions and observations. I won’t go into fiction books because this episode is not about that. Most if not all non-fiction books that I have read over the years were created with a different purpose. Some were meant to motivate and inspire, others were meant to educate. All were meant to serve a specific audience and to help solving a problem.
So should you write a book? I think you should.
If you want to educate your audience, help them out by sharing your expertise then why not? Once again, you should not expect to become a bestseller because that is the wrong reason for writing a book. A book can also help your brand in several ways. A book adds credibility and authority. The simple fact that you actually set down and wrote 25,000-100,000 words is already praise-worthy. Once your book is complete you can try selling it or you can simply give it out to your friends, family, clients and partners. At the very least this will be a great experience that will teach you how to be more consistent, hard working and more organized.
I’ve always wanted to have my own book since I was a little kid but that dream eventually faded as I realized I am not an author and my writing sucks. I also thought I lacked creativity and didn’t have a story to share. In late 2015 this dream came back to me. At this point I knew that my book will be non-fiction and I had the main idea about the content. However, not knowing where to start and being completely overwhelmed I put this dream aside as we often do.
Just a few months ago as I was listening through Pat Flynn’s Smart Passive Income podcast, Pat mentioned that he will be launching a physical course that will teach people how to write a book. He was also looking for people to beta test this new course and I knew I just had to jump on this opportunity. I knew that if I ever wanted to write my very first book this was my chance. I applied to be a beta tester and a few weeks (or month) later I completely forgot all about that… until last week.
I received a package labeled Smart Passive Income and that package contained the course and all the information. I was one of the lucky 21 people who got selected to test drive that new course. Now is the time to announce that I will be going ahead with my very first book thank to Pat and his team. The course should take 90 days although I am sure it will be a little longer for me since I already have a few vacations planned where I’ll be completely off-grid. No computer, no Facebook, no Internet.
As I progress with this project I’ll try to share the updates as much as I possible can. If you haven’t already, please do subscribe to the podcast and Extra Paycheck Facebook page as this is where I’ll be posting the updates.
Now scroll up and press the PLAY button to hear the full episode where I dig deeper into the subject of writing your own book.
Also don’t forget to check out my list of 30 recommended books every entrepreneur should read.
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– Alex
