Coming up with an idea for a book is one thing;
articulating it is another. Maybe there is a general area of self-help
that you would like to focus on, or perhaps you’re deciding between
several ideas for your book. Here are three rules to help you narrow
down the topics and get you started:
Find a niche. The best way to sell a self-help book is to write about a topic
that is not readily available already. For example, if you decide to
write a book about overcoming depression, you will have to work hard to
compete among the thousands of books on the same topic.
In order to standout in a crowd, find your niche – narrow the topic
from general to specific, or perhaps introduce the topic in a new light.
You may also consider simply choosing a topic that isn’t as widely
discussed. By finding your niche, you’re not losing out on a larger
audience; you’re increasing your chances of being heard. When there are
not as many voices fighting to be heard, yours becomes much louder.
Write about something you know. This is especially important within the self-help genre: write what you know.
Take a look at the practices that have helped you personally in life,
in love, in your work, and share your knowledge with others. Think
about what gave you the inspiration to write; what is it that compels
you to share your thoughts and beliefs? Focus on your life
experiences. If you write about something that you have personally
experienced, or a person that you are close to has experienced, your
story will become more compelling. Tap into your mind and heart, and
the words will flow much easier – trust your instincts.
Be passionate. Before you decide to publish a
self-help book, make sure you are passionate about the
topic. Writing and publishing a book is one of the most rewarding tasks
that you can accomplish, but it also requires you to research and
dedicate much of your time to the project. Write about something that is part of you; something that consumes your waking thoughts. If you could give one piece of advice, or teach the world to do one thing, what would it be?
Woman Writing in Daily Planner
Last year was another terrible year for the publishing industry — book sales
fell by another 15 to 30 percent, while e-books have risen 115 percent,
amounting to nearly 20 percent of all book sales. The average age of
book buyers is also high, around 55 for those who buy conventional hard
and soft cover books. This all points to a dying industry, and yet
reading is probably at an all-time high if you factor in the Internet,
blogs, Twitter and all social media. At a time of flux, where should the
aspiring writer turn?
I’ll begin with the cautionary tale of a disappearing best-seller.
For two weeks I’ve been on a national book tour to promote a new novel
called God: A Story of Revelation. It’s a grind, with late
nights, long flights, and many enthusiastic fans who want their book
signed. I love to meet the reading public, but even if I didn’t, this is
how books have always been promoted. The book sold more than twice the
number to make most bestseller lists in its opening week, and enough to
stay on the lists the second week. But neither happened. God
appeared on no lists, and the explanations varied: a computer glitch
that failed to register sales, the down-grading of bulk sales when lots
of people attend a single event.
Even established writers feel aggrieved when they deserve to make the
best-seller list and yet don’t. Book chains base their future orders on
these lists, and the week’s best-sellers get prominent displays up
front. The caution I have in mind reaches further, however. At the best
of times, the publishing industry was beginning to operate
like Hollywood: the blockbusters paid for the flops. Just as in the
film industry, best-sellers are nearly impossible to predict, except for
the tiniest handful of authors. Now isn’t the best of times, and
publishing houses face a shrinking market, decreased staff (most of my
old editors are long gone), and the same unpredictability about which
titles will have good sales.
At its core, the publishing houses are wonderful places, full of
dedicated book people who are talented, committed, and eager to bring up
new writers. They are not to blame for a system in flux. The economics
of e-books are dismal for them, and for established authors, since the
price is so much lower than hard cover books and quality paperbacks. So
what’s the alternative? As long as the old best-seller system keeps
declining, making it much, much harder for new writers to break in,
alternatives will have to emerge.
The only advice that I can give is self-promotion and going where the
readers are. Self-promotion usually doesn’t appeal to writers and their
introverted nature, but it is known to work. M. Scott Peck had to sue
his publisher when The Road Less Traveled sold poorly and they
didn’t want to run the risk of a reprint. Peck won the right to a second
run, and by vigorously promoting his book at libraries, book clubs,
book fairs, and even churches, he created a phenomenal best-seller that
remained on the New York Times list for 544 weeks, more than
twelve years. Buying copies of your own book to sell out of the trunk of
your car has led to more than a few successful books, especially if your book has local or regional interest. There is also desktop publishing, which has become easier and more affordable.
But self-promotion can’t happen until your book is published and
somebody agrees to distribute it. New writers tend to miss the
all-important role played by the regional distributors who warehouse
titles and send them out to bookstores. The other mass-market
distribution outlets were chains like B. Dalton and Borders, but we all
know what happened there. Discount stores like Wal-Mart also play a part
in the distribution scheme, but they focus on existing best-sellers and
remaindered books sold for deep discounts.
Which leaves the second piece of advice, to go where the readers are. No
one knows what the book business will look like a decade from now, and
established authors will struggle for a while over the lost revenues
connected to e-books. Yet the one bright light in this chaotic scene is
that new writers can find their readers, target them, and speak directly to them as never before.
This is thanks to the Internet, Facebook, blogs, Amazon’s open policy
about e-books, Facebook, and other social media. Like it or not,
successful writers are probably going to turn into book entrepreneurs at
the same time. Publishers are becoming more and more risk averse. In a
few years, no writers will be given advances except the most guaranteed
sellers. The rest will enter into partnership with their publishers.
This means shared risk. The old system boiled down to an advance,
followed by royalties of 10-20 percent for any sales that went beyond
the cash advance. The risk for the writer was minimal, but the payout
from royalties was proportionally low so that publishers could afford to
take all the risk. Writers have griped about low royalties since
Gutenberg. Now we are being offered half the reward for taking half the
risk. This system, which is just emerging, should help writers, although
on the negative side there are many titles – more than half, I am told —
that never pay back their publishing expense, much less royalties to
the author.
I’d also advise new writers not to write for praise, as much as we soak it up. Write to be noticed, which means in the end writing from the heart.
I’ve taken my lumps critically, and yet my skin is thin enough that I
want to throw eggs at reviewers who don’t even read the book. This just
happened with God, when the reviewer at Kirkus Reviews, which
has a wide readership, referred to a main character — the lovable
English saint, Julian of Norwich — as a “he.” It was obvious that the
book had been judged without benefit of reading. Admittedly, that’s more
efficient.
Right now, it’s any port in a storm, and instead of getting a few
thousand dollars from an inexpensive e-book, new writers may do better
through profit sharing. At the same time, being a book entrepreneur
doesn’t stop there. Networking is the magic word, and the better you are
at it, the more chances your new book has. I’m sorry that my
best-seller vanished, not for the payout but because I loved the book I
wrote and I want my publishers to succeed. In the larger scheme of
things, my books are being swept along in the tide of change. As one
tide rises, another falls. Everyone who reads or writes must come to
terms with the new uncertainty.
Some of us love using technology to write,
but as we highlighted yesterday, the best writing system is the one
that stays out of your way. Author Patrick McLean discusses why, despite
his love for tech, he sticks with longhand when writing.
Is technology really my friend? Or is it just pretending to be my friend so it can date my sister?
I like technology. A lot. But I’m not too sure how technology feels
about me. It may be my faithful friend and boon companion — then again,
it may just be pretending to be my friend so it can date my sister.
Especially when it comes to writing.
I’m writing a book. And for all the romance and immensity that phrase
can contain, writing a book is also simply a production process. I am
in the process of assembling 75,000 to 100,000 words. And, after writing
50,000 of them, I’ve become convinced that the first draft is the
hardest part.
Hemingway famously said that the first draft of everything
is shit. For what it’s worth, I agree. So, my question, becomes: What’s
the easiest way to get through the hardest part.
And to my surprise, the easiest way turns out to be writing longhand.
Not printing, mind you, but composing with a long, flowing, and
delightfully irregular script that fills the page like a river of words.
I sit down with a pen and a piece of paper and a thousand words roll
out in a flash. And not only does it often take less time than typing, I
think I write better longhand.
Now realize, I am not a hunt and peck typist. I type very fast. And
when I type on one of those thin little laptop keyboards that have about
3 millimeters of travel, my typing speed approaches the absurd—like
Glenn Gould, the wonderfully talented and eccentric pianist who
re-manufactured his piano, shortening the action on his keys so that he
could play Bach faster. Beautiful, yet a little insane.
A pen and paper has but one functionality. It captures the marks I
make so that they can be referred to at a later time. It doesn’t ring,
it doesn’t bother me with an incoming chat or IM. It never asks me to
plug it in so it can get more power. It doesn’t crash, it never needs an
upgrade, and it is unlikely that someone will snatch my pad and bolt
from a coffee shop with it when I turn my back.
Sure paper is perishable. But it is predictably perishable. Data
turns to noise in all kinds of unpredictable ways. Like hard drive
crashes. And if an IT person tells you that there is a way to archive a
digital file, not touch it for 500 years, and guarantee that it will
remain usable—that person is lying to you. If you think I’m wrong, I’ll
email you some Word Star and Apple Works documents just as soon as I can
figure out how to get them off my five and a quarter inch floppies.
But I can go the National Archives right now and read a copy of the
Magna Carta that was handwritten 793 years ago. No format or version
issues here. (It’s fitting for this essay that Magna Carta literally
means “Great Paper”.)
But, to paraphrase Emerson, all of this is small account compared to
what lies within us. And that is the struggle to organize and
communicate our thoughts clearly with the beautiful, yet horribly
imprecise instrument of language. And it is in this struggle, I believe,
that the beauty and power of writing longhand is discovered.
But all that time is simply a field day for the critical part of your
brain. Just the time it needs to jump in and muck everything up. This
part of the brain needs something to criticize. After all, that’s its
job. But the critical function is not creative. Be critical about
anything. No matter how absurd you are being, you will find ammo to
support you. Try running Hamlet through a Microsoft Grammar check. Try
running Hamlet and leaving all the scenes in.
The point is, there’s no possible way to get it right if you don’t
first get it down. And as much as I know this—I mean know it in my
bones, as a carpenter knows his measuring tape—it still doesn’t help.
The critical part of my brain is telling me, right now, that this
sentence is horrible. That the entire device of anthropomorphizing the
critical side of my nature in this essay is a bad idea. And that I just
misspelled critical. And I shouldn’t have started two sentences in a row
with “and”.
But when I write longhand, the experience is different. I think it is
because that critical part of my brain is busy picking apart my
handwriting (which truly is horrible) instead of my prose. It tells me
that my handwriting is atrocious. And it gets the satisfaction of being
right. But who cares? While it’s busy with that, the words are just
rushing out. And they’re not henpecked or second-guessed before they’ve
had time to cool. They exist in a flawed, but pure state. This kind of
prose has a feral power that seems to be lacking from the things I type.
Maybe that’s not it; maybe it’s just harder to get my head in that
effortless writing space when I use a keyboard. But whatever the case
is, writing longhand makes it easier for me to reach a writer’s high.
And if you’re still not sold on the idea that writing longhand might
help you write better, consider this: Until the 20th century, books were
written by hand. I would argue that the best writing in history was
composed by hand. The entire process is much easier now. But, would you
like to argue that the increase in the power of our technology has led to a corresponding increase in the quality of our writing?
The human mind is a funny thing; it likes to play tricks on us.
For example, when we proofread and edit our own writing,
we tend to read it as we think it should be, which means we misread our
own typos and other spelling, grammar, and punctuation mistakes as well
as problems with word choice and sentence structure, context, and
overall readability.
If you have a friend or family member who has good grammar skills, maybe they can help you out by proofreading and editing your work before you send it out or publish it.
For special submissions and publications, hiring a professional
proofreader or editor is the best way to make sure your writing is free
of errors.
But for most of us, it’s not likely that anyone’s going to proofread
and edit every single piece of writing that we create. That’s especially
true for writers who put out a lot of material — like bloggers,
copywriters, and freelancers. Proofreading and editing services can get expensive and friends and family probably don’t want to spend all their evenings checking your work.
Do-It-Yourself Proofreading and Editing Tips
Sometimes, the only option available is to do it yourself. Here are
21 proofreading and editing tips that you can put into practice for
polishing your own writing.
Proofread and edit every single piece of writing before it is seen
by another set of eyes. No exceptions. Even if you do hire a
professional editor or proofreader, check your work first.
Understand the difference between proofreading and editing. Edit
first by making revisions. When the piece is done, proofread to check
for proper grammar.
Use the “track changes” feature in Microsoft Word when you edit.
This feature essentially saves your edits and marks up your document so
you can go back and revert to different revisions.
Step away from a piece of writing before you proofread it. The
longer the piece, the longer you should wait to proofread it. Let a
novel sit for six weeks. Let a blog post sit overnight.
Before proofreading and editing, run spelling and grammar check.
Then, run it again after you’re done polishing to check for any
lingering typos. However, don’t count on software for spelling and
grammar. Use it as a fail-safe.
Read your work aloud. Pronounce each word slowly and clearly as you read and check for mistakes.
Proofreading should never be a rush job. Do it s l o w l y.
Don’t review your work once and then send it out into the world. I
recommend editing until the piece reads smoothly and proofreading
everything three times or more.
At the very least, proofread until you don’t catch any more errors.
Read the piece backward so you can see each word separately and out of context.
Look up the spelling of proper names, scientific, and technical
terms that you’re not familiar with to make sure you’re spelling them
correctly.
Don’t make any assumptions. If you’re not sure about something, then
look it up so you can fix a mistake (if there is one) and learn the
correct way.
Don’t forget to proofread titles, headlines, and footnotes.
Pay attention to the mistakes you’ve made in your writing. You’ll
find that you tend to make the same ones repeatedly. Keep track of these
and work on avoiding them during the initial writing process in the
future.
Choose one of the many style guides and stick with it. This will
make your work more consistent, and you’ll have a great resource to use
when you have questions about style and formatting.
Start building a collection of grammar books and writing resources
so when you do run into questions (and you will), you have access to
reliable and credible answers.
If you intentionally let grammatical mistakes slip through, do so by
choice and make sure you have a good reason. It’s okay to break the
rules if you know why you’re breaking them.
Pay attention to formatting. Use the same formatting on all
paragraphs, headings, and other typographical stylings. Learn how to use
these features in your word processing software.
Proofread when you’re fresh and wide awake. Proofreading doesn’t go over well when you’re tired or distracted.
Proofreading and editing can be tedious so break up your revision
sessions by doing other tasks that help you clear your mind: exercise,
play with the pets or kids, go for a short walk, or listen to some
music. Try to avoid reading or writing during these breaks.
Make it your business to develop good grammar skills. Read up on grammar or subscribe to a blog that publishes grammar posts (like this one) to stay up to date on proper grammar.
Some people love the proofreading and editing process. Others despise
it. If you’re into grammar, the mechanics of writing, and polishing
your work, then proofreading and editing will be easier and more
enjoyable for you. If not, just look at it as part of your job —
something that goes along with being a writer.
And once you’re done proofreading and editing, make sure you get back to your writing.
As a writer you need to be very clear in
your mind about what you want to write about. If the concept and purpose
of your intended material is steady and clear in your mind, then
conveying it becomes simpler.
2. Think About How You’ll Express Your Thoughts
The second most important aspect in
writing, is lucidity of thought and expression. No one is going to have
the patience to read your work if it’s something that doesn’t make a lot
of sense. We cannot go on rambling now, can we? The stream of
consciousness method ought to be left alone to the professionals in this
field. For beginners, lucidity is the key. Let it be your mantra, have –
lucidity – lucidity – you get the drift.
3. Check Your Facts Before Writing
Checking out your facts and information when writing on any topic is a
must, as you don’t want to look a little (well, a lot!) silly. The
material could be read by thousands, so a blooper in any information
would get spotted straight away and reported! Believe me, if you’re not
going to sell yourself, attract positive attention and gain a prominent reputation as a writer, if you don’t watch those mistakes (did you spot that one?), then you should look for a different avenue.
4. Watch Out For Grammar Gaffes
Grammar, typos and punctuation marks
better stay pristine. We’re not text messaging our friends, now, are we?
It also pays to brush up your language when you’re writing. What may
sound right when you’re talking to others, might not mean the same when
you write it.
5. Make It Original
The primary focus and responsibility of a writer is to make the writing an original production;
a stamp of your own mark and style. It is the ethical responsibility of
any writer to be conscious of plagiarism and it is also interesting to
note, that more often than not, a particular writer that we associate
well with, will influence us in our own writing style. You will need to
‘break out of the mould’, and let your distinctive style emerge, don’t
‘copy’ your favourite author’s idea in the world; you have a fantastic
world ahead of you in your writing career, with many ideas I hope.
6. Be Open To Engaging In Conversation
As with any writer, every scrap of information that you come across will
embody a bank of knowledge and inspiration, so it is important that
there should be no substitute to reading by the ton. When we let our
imagination flare, anything can prove to be an inspiring idea. You, as a
writer, will also need to be open to travelling, meeting new people and
engaging in stimulating conversation.
8. Develop Your Vocabulary
There is also no substitute for developing an interesting and varied
vocabulary. Over-used words read ‘booooooring’ and limit your
expression. A widespread and well-worked vocabulary pays in many ways.
9. Edit Your Writing A Few Times
The best way of making your words an interesting read is by editing them
over and over again until you are entirely satisfied with your work.
Spending as much time as you practically can revising your work is a
good idea. With experience and practice, you will become more aware of
your need to say “enough is enough” and stop.
10. Don’t Get Carried Away
You also have to know where to limit yourself when you are writing about
something you are passionate about. Don’t become carried away when
writing for a topic which captures your interests. Sticking to the form
and bearing the image of a wider array of readers will often do the trick.
