Self Publish or Perish: The New Age of Book Writing

In this new age of the Internet, information is everywhere and people are hungry to find it. If they have a question about ANYTHING in life, they are apt to jump online, go to a search engine and trust whatever they find. So how do you compete among trillions of pages of Internet content? The answer is simple: you write a book (or hire a ghostwriter to do it for you!).

In doing so, write a book with the intention of publishing it with a commercial publisher. This attitude will elevate your standards and create a high platform on which to perch. Quality is king. This book will speak for you forever; it will either speak poorly for you, or it will dynamically change lives. That being said, don't let the traditional publishing industry push you around and force you to wait. People are relying on your information. If you invest in writing an exceptional book, you deserve to reap the rewards more quickly than traditional publishing allows (their process is as long as a year or more to get your book into bookstores), so partner your desire to create something outstanding with your ability to self publish and get your book out there into the hands of the people who need it most!

In life and in business, there are few things that bring the respect, the admiration, the financial reward, and the emotional gratification that writing a book does. The media will refer to you as an expert, your customers will look at you with newfound respect, and, most importantly, you'll look at yourself differently, with so much more confidence and a crystallized understanding of what you offer your customers!

Remember when I said the answer was simple? Well, it was, but implementing it will require a bit more work. You need to take your expertise and create a unique, even remarkable delivery system for it. You and/or your ghostwriter are going to write a book but not just any book; it will be YOUR book! This is an endeavor that should take no less than six months to write, writing at least an hour a day, every day. It could possibly take as long as a year or more (and that doesn't mean three months on and six months off!) to write a great book. Writing an exceptional manuscript worthy of worldwide distribution is a creative process that requires tremendous focus and the dedication of a brilliant team of people: ghostwriter, focus group participants, professional analysts, structure professionals, proofreaders, formatters, and more!

Now what is most important? Starting to write a book today, because time is of the essence! Consider this: in a world of instant gratification, the publishing industry has not yet caught up to our need for speed. Commercial publishers still take 9 to 18 months to get a book from manuscript to the bookstores, which comes after contract negotiations (two to three months) and finding the right agent and publisher (probably six months to a year). Who has this kind of patience anymore?

This is where self publishing comes in! Mind you, my recommendation is to still go through the process of creating something truly remarkable, investing your time and your money to write a book or hire a ghostwriter to write a book worthy of commercial publication, but do NOT let the slow speed of commercial publishing deter you from getting your message out quicker. Self Publish! Hire your ghostwriter to write a book and then while you are submitting to agents and publishers, self publish it through one of the many vanity presses available.

In addition to your time, this alternative will require investing a bit of capital, probably around $5,000 to $7,500 for 2,000 copies of your book, including the price to format it, acquire your ISBN number and get it listed on Amazon. But realize this: when you write a book and then you self publish, you make so much more of the money. When you sell those 2,000 books, your income can be anywhere from $15,000 to $40,000, versus a much smaller royalty from a traditional publisher.

So write a book worthy of commercial publishing, and then self publish to test the content, and build up a stockpile of cash that you can use to market and publicize the book when it hits the bookstores. Heck, if you can sell 30,000 units on your own, a commercial publisher will pick you up based on that alone!

You must be strategic in this day and age to survive! Think about what you are doing today and what you'll need tomorrow. Today you need to start writing (or find your ghostwriter), so you can self publish tomorrow, and commercially publish down the road. Without the writing, there is neither the self publishing opportunity nor the commercial publishing chance. So start your writing, or hire your ghostwriter immediately (check out my article: 10 Questions You Must Ask Before You Hire a Ghostwriter)!