How many books are you writing?

On our recent Make It Happen day, one of our clients was having her first clear day to focus on her book. But it had been going around in her head for a long time. Eight years in fact. And eight years ago, she had started to write it. But for one reason or another it hadn’t happened. 

Then recently, she realised that she couldn’t put it off any longer. So, she signed up to join us for this year’s writing retreat in Spain, and as she booked early, she has bonus access to our three Make It Happen days.

The thing is if writing a book was easy, everyone would be doing it. 

Many people think about writing a book but very few decide to make it happen. Some get caught up in overwhelm. Others start and never finish. And it’s not unusual to stall when you get confused with your own stuff, and don’t know what to do next. 

So what is the first thing to do if you really want to write your book?

On the Make It Happen day, our first signpost for our client was the Get Started workbook. We’ve had great feedback on our free download. It shares the top 21 questions we believe every business author needs to ask themselves before they start to write their book.

And question 3 is: How many books am I writing? 

We know how important it is to answer this question before putting pen to paper to set you up for success. 

If you have more than one book to write, or you have an inkling that this may be the case, knowing this is helpful at an early stage. 

If you’re like most of our clients, you probably have years of life experience that you could talk about. When working with clients, you probably intuitively spurt out lots of really useful information. But talking about it is one thing and writing about it is another. And even if you’ve got a clear process that you teach, you could probably talk about this stuff for days, so how do you hone what to include in your book and what to leave out? 

When you know what you’re writing, you can start to map out the sequence, which makes it easier to create your book structure. Then when you capture a piece of information for your book, you can decide whether it goes in the one you’re writing or whether it goes in another. 

You can decide what research you need to take to ensure you’re writing the right book first.  

Also consider, if you’re going to be supporting your clients with this topic and speaking about the subject, then what do you want to talk about for the next few years? Where are you drawn to start?  

When you know all of this, then it’ll make your book easier to write. Now that’s a great incentive, isn’t it?

Going back to our lady on the Make It Happen day, we spent a bit of time exploring her ideas. And actually her first book may well be an overview of what she teaches and what she wants to get known for (another question in the Get Started workbook!) Then her subsequent books may replicate the information for different audiences to consume or go into more detail on specific topics.

This is a model I followed with Your Book is the Hook and my fifth book, Book Marketing Made Simple. And when you know this at an early stage, you can decide which book to write and when, and set people up for the next books in your series – another key marketing tool!

So how many books are you writing?

Let us know and we’d love your comments on the blog.

And if you’d like help with your book (or books!), then please get in touch to apply for a complimentary Book Strategy call. We’d love to have a chat with you to find out more about your writing.

Just click this link to apply for a call.