7 questions for prospective authors & book coaching clients

Are you really ready to start writing a book to build your personal brand?

These 7 key questions can provide a new perspective for prospective authors and book coaching clients considering writing a book to build their personal brand.

Addressing these questions will help you make the right decisions as you proceed forward on your writing project.

The questions will also help you adapt to today?s changed writing and publishing environment.

1. Do you have a book idea or a business idea? Today, unless you?re writing fiction for personal expression, you should view your book from a strictly business perspective. Few authors can exist solely on profits from book sales alone. To succeed today, you need to view your book as the nucleus of a new business, attracting prospective clients for follow-up sales of information products, services, and opportunities for paid speaking engagements.
2. How relevant is your idea? Successful authors don?t allow their enthusiasm for their topic blind them to marketplace realities. Nonfiction books only succeed when they help readers solve problems or achieve goals. An independent perspective can help you test the practicality of your idea, by making sure that a market exists for the book and that it?s possible to reach prospective book buyers before the book is published.
3. How do you intend to profit from your idea? Avoid writing your book until you have created a business plan for your book, one that describes how you will market your book and how you will profit from your book. Your book marketing and profit plan is as important as your table of contents; perhaps, even, more important. Your book marketing plan should provide a month-by-month guide to building a business around your book.
4. Are you willing to execute daily? Writing and publishing success is based on daily execution; short, frequent writing and book marketing sessions are far more effective than longer, less frequent writing session. Daily execution keeps your ideas flowing and your brain engaged. Last-minute, deadline-driven ?binge writing? is a recipe for mistakes, omissions, and wasted effort. If you?re not willing to view your writing and book marketing as important as your most profitable client, you may want to rethink your priorities.
5. Do you have the resources needed to succeed? Writing and publishing a book is easy when you?re independently wealth, have just sold a business, or received a hefty bonus for taking early retirement. A lack of windfall resources doesn?t mean you have to give up on your book idea, however, it only means that you will have to work around your lack of resources. You?ll have to identify ways to self-fund the expenses involved in book marketing and publishing as you continue to write your book. In most cases, with a plan, it?s possible.
6. What are the obstacles standing in your way? Many graduate from college and go on to successful careers without mastering the writing habits needed for large projects like books. Likewise, many have never managed to master time as effectively as they could. Rather than ignoring the obstacles standing in the way of writing and publishing a book, working with a book coach helps you inventory the resources supporting your writing project and overcome the obstacles standing in your way.
7. Are you willing to change? An author?s journey to a published book can be the catalyst to a stronger, more profitable, and more resilient career. But, this can only take place if you?re willing to change, to develop new habits and new skills. Letting go of bad or inefficient habits won?t change who you are. But, learning new, more effective habits, can pave the way for success you might, otherwise, never be able to enjoy.

Take the next step

If you like the 7 questions above, and would like to learn more, email me and I?ll send you a copy of my forthcomingworkbook, 99 Questions to Ask Before You Write or Self-Publish a Brand-Building Book.

scott walker recall fisker atlantic social darwinism jamie lynn spears wisconsin recall election april 4 santa monica college