When I was a little girl, we had an assignment in second grade to write a book. There were no thoughts that it wasn’t possible. Because of course it was. We had no concerns about anything other than writing our story and getting it out into the world. The thing that I remember about this project was the ease of it. And, my mom still has that cloth bound book to this day. The title of the story was “The Biggest Snail in the World” and it was about a mama snail that had two baby snails and two caves in her shell to a tunnel of gold and silver. Publishing that first book taught me something important-there’s always at least one person who would like to read your book. In this case it was my mom. The other thing looking back at that book-I was thinking about money.
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Show Notes
- I talk to a lot of would be authors about why they haven’t published their first book yet. Typically they tell me the following:
- I have so many ideas
- I’m not sure where to start
- They mention perceived barriers to entry like lack of expertise, the cost, or the time
- To all of that I say “bullshit”
- With self-publishing you can literally publish every single idea that you have. Just write a list and write the books.
- If you’re not sure where to start-there are tools to help you get started like my “Make Money with Ebooks” course and I even have a free workshop that you can check out.
- How can you become an expert without deciding that today is the day that you will be referred to as an expert? You need to assert this sometimes. And, real talk, you may be waiting a long time for other people to declare that you’re an expert at something.
- Reason #1 Why You Should Self-Publish
- Because you can!
- There are no barriers to you self-publishing.
- You just need an idea
- Implement that idea
- Get it in front of the people that you’re trying to entertain, educate, or serve.
- What about the expense?
- Real talk-I spent $15 on my first book and 23 hours of sitting my butt in a chair and writing it. Technically, it was my second book. The first book which still is available for sale is The Epic Guide to Moving to Colorado. That took about 4 hours to get done. The second book was a romance book under the pen name Autumn Stone and those fiction books have made me a lot of money.
- Here’s my overall philosophy-you need to start where you are. Because if you don’t, many of you will never start and that would be a shame. So, please don’t get stuck on the following:
- Cost of editing-I edited my own books in the beginning and as my earnings grow, I will start hiring and fairly compensating the editors that I work with in the future.
- Time to write-I’m going to keep it real, you just might have to wake up a little earlier or go bed a little later in order to get your book done. You may need to dig in deep for a period of time in order to achieve your goal. And, most people are unwilling to do the hard work. When people ask me how I’m able to stay focused on writing books, etc. I tell them the truth-I enjoy it and I like the money. I will make the time because earning $2,000 in passive income in a month is pretty awesome.
- Who will read your book-There’s at least one person out there besides you who will read your book.
- There are so many other books in this area of interest.
- So what? There are a ridiculous number of romance novels and people still buy them. Why? Because each writer’s voice is unique.
- The Tech is scary-Um, you just need the following to get started:
- A pen and paper
- Or, a laptop
- Or, a cell phone
- Ipad
- Basically, you decide
- I suck at writing
- My first book is my worst book but it’s made me the most money. You have to get the work out there so that you can get the feedback that you need to improve your writing
- Imposter Syndrome-declare your truth! If you’ve spent years learning a skill, helping people, writing about “a thing” then, it’s safe to say that you have some level of expertise in said area of interest. Let me give you an example:
- I wrote a book about moving to Colorado. I’d spent years answering questions that people would ask about moving to Colorado. YEARS. I even have a blog and podcast about Colorado. So, I wrote the book. And, it has helped a lot of people out.
- Romance novels-I’ve read romance novels since I was around twelve years old. I’ve read so many romances that it’s ridiculous. And, I had opinions on a lot of them. Some I loved, some I hated, and many times I wished that the heroine in the story would look…like me. So, I decided to write stories featuring women who look like me. I didn’t want to wait for someone else to create these stories. I just went ahead and did it myself. Because I can.
- So, I ask, what are you waiting for?
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Loving it, most of my friends say that I’d must to write a book about my adventure into disaster’s dates, a part of me is agree the other part is scared maybe self publishing could be a good deal…however well done!!!
I would totally read a book about disastrous dates!!