You should write a book. I did!

How many times have you heard someone say, “you should write a book” or “I should write a book” without a clue as to what that entails.

I have read accounts of publishing a book by some notable people within their fields. Leaders in business consulting specialties, and creators of Masterclasses, successful people and books that are best sellers in their fields.

Like many things today, everyone is a writer, as well as a photographer, and a content creator, social media provides our channels. But writing a book is much more, it is long form, meaning, a lot of pages a lot of words. That is where the work comes in. Challenging your own attention span, and that of a potential reader.

I learned this over the course of the last almost seven years.

I traveled a lot of miles by car and by plane, recording conversations sitting down with strangers I would meet. I found people willing to talk to me in the small towns and communities I would visit. I recorded on video and photographed, yet someone in the end said I should write a book. I have never written a book, but I just did.

It has been a learning experience, as a friend said like giving birth. I have self published, what was called just three or four years ago, second rate, a non-serious book. Well, like a lot of things, that has changed. Self publishing has been elevated to the real-deal book world. Some would argue that, but many successful books today are self published. I have learned there is good reason for that. The publishing industry, like many things today is not what it used to be. Smaller independent publishers are backlogged and financially challenged. The lead times are very long and then there is, and always has been the issue of control. Like everything today more, faster, and cheaper is how so many books are hitting the shelves. The real old fashioned book stores have set good guide posts for self publishing. They only take books from accredited publishing houses such as Ingram. The good news is Ingram has a print on demand, self publishing division. So you can have your self published book online and in a book store. I have known authors who had boxes of books in a warehouse, and many went to recycle, and a lot of money lost in the printing. Order a book from Amazon and get it with prime in a couple of days. That book you ordered was printed just for you.

So then there is the marketing part. Buy my book! Unless you are a famous person, or legacy author, where your name is what sells the book, you have a lot of marketing to do. If you are a big deal in a niche business you can do well, the “how to succeed market” is huge. I am just about to dive head first into marketing. So I hope you will buy my book. “BOOM! It’s a Big Country for an Old Man.” Think of it as a version of the Great American Road Trip. It is easy to find on Amazon.