Maybe you are looking for the easiest way on how to write a book but don't have any idea where to start. If you are an author who is just starting and eager to get your book out onto the market, let me help you know how to write and self-publish a book.
Today's question has three answers and you're going to want to stick around. Because the third answer is going to tell you the one thing you must know if you're going to succeed at writing a book and getting it onto the market.
So let's get into it. The question asked today was, how to write a book? And the person who's asking this question obviously would be an author or somebody interested in getting a book onto the market but don't know where to start.
In this case, you don't even have maybe the manuscript in place. And you're wondering "what exactly should I do to get a book onto the market?". You can not just think about "what should I write about?".
"How do I write it down? In what program or software do I use? How do I format it? Which website should I put it on? How do I market it?" There are so many things that seem so confusing.
But in today's thing, we're going to focus mostly on the writing portion of the book. And we're going to answer these questions. But before we get into the answers, grab a copy of my absolutely free Self-Publishing Checklist.
It will help you make sure that you are not skipping any of the steps necessary in getting a book published and out onto the market. So let's get into it. When I first got started with self-publishing, I wanted to get a book onto the market on "goal achievement".
That is exactly what we're focused on in this blog for the most part. Trying to help as many people achieve their goals as possible. And so, I was thinking I want to put a book on the market because I can help more people this way.
This is probably one of the top ways you can help people and getting a book out worth thousands and thousands. I think my original book is sold between one and two thousand copies. The thing is it sounded very difficult at the time.
"How exactly am I going to get this book onto the market?" But I have to write the book first. And that seems like "oh my goodness such a huge task to get this done".
Choose A Hungry Market
So, I listened to podcasts and I read some books on the subject of Kindle Publishing. There is one thing I discovered here that is very important for you to understand. It is that when you're looking at getting a book or doing anything, you must be listening to other people.
Listen as they talk about how they do that task over and over. It is a key issue that you're going to want to do to get yourself motivated. If you feel overwhelmed then choose somebody who's a little bit simpler.
I try to hold things very simple as opposed to others who make things very complicated. I like to keep things as simple as possible when we're trying to get our books written and published. I find that listening to the right podcasts, watching the right Youtube videos, and reading the right books can be very helpful.
I discovered that they suggested writing about a thousand words a day. So I was writing 1,000 words a day until I completed the first manuscript. At that point, I was able to get it edited and formatted and I got covers too.
And as quickly as possible I got it onto Amazon. So my book was available on the Kindle store, not an audiobook yet and not a paperback book but the Kindle book was there. It did not make many sales because I didn't understand how to optimize the book.
Check out this related article: What If My Book Doesn't Sell?
So, I fixed the cover, the editing, and I put in how to do email lists, email generation, and all sorts of additional things. To make sure that this book was going to sell as many copies as possible. But the starting point if you noticed, I was writing a thousand words a day.
That was one of the key things that you're also going to want to make sure that you do. Well, we're going to hit that now with the answers. So, how to write a book?
The first one is you're going to choose a market that is hungry for readers. And how would we even know that? We would use the tool KDSpy to determine whether or not it's going to be a profitable market.
I want to market where I'm writing a book where there are a lot of readers but very few books. This is the tool that you can use for this exact purpose. It's amazingly easy to use.
It will show you exactly how many books in the top 20 books for a given keyword will show up in the top 100,000 basic sales rank for Amazon. And then we just divide that. Or we take the total number of books for those keywords.
Butt In Chair
So when you search on Amazon, you'll see there was let's say you had 1,000 books available, and then let's say you had 20 of them. So you take 1,000 divided by 20 and then that gives us a ratio. We can work through different keywords to figure out which keywords will be most profitable.
The second thing that's important there is to make sure we're writing a book on a topic that we are interested in. Because we're not writing one book, we're writing a lot of books. The people who are making $100,000 a year or more, putting out on average 40 books.
So we're going to just keep on writing on this topic or related topics. But it has to be something you're interested in. So make sure you're doing that.
Check out this related article: Can't Find A Topic For My Book!
If you're not, getting the ghost of the book written is also an option. You find a profitable niche and then you can find people who will write those books for you which is just fine. Our goal is to make sure that we're feeding a hungry market.
The second issue is "butt in chair". That is to say that you just need to sit in your chair for a certain amount of time every day. Either a certain number of words that you're going to write every day or the other issue which would be an amount of time.
So for me, I was doing a thousand words a day. And that connects into our secret answer which is that you're going to carve that time out. Get your butt in the chair and you're going to either do 30 minutes or a thousand words.
So it is you without break, without holidays, not even the weekends. Just make sure that you're producing every single day. I do that here at this blog as well which is trying to produce every single day.
To make sure that we're producing books and moving things forward. And this is the key to making sure that you're going to not only have the idea in your head but get the book and the manuscript out.
Then at that point, we're ready to move through the stuff I discuss in my other blogs and videos. If that's unclear, just let me know and I can help you immediately. Now, how to write a book? Have you written a book?
That's something that would be very helpful for me to make sure that this blog is reaching you. If you have written a book, write "Yes" below in the comments and if you've never written a book, write "No". That would really help me out.
So just let me know and I will respond to you as well. And check out my other blogs and videos for more answers to your self-publishing questions.