How to write a book in six months – the key milestones

If you’re thinking about writing a book, how long will it take you to do it?

I believe a good timeline is to give yourself six months to write a book.

In December, I ran a Book Masterclass when I went through the process of writing and publishing a book, focusing on the 10 Authority Principles from my sixth book, Becoming An Authority. I shared an infographic showing what needs to be done and when if you want to get your written and published by Christmas 2020, 12 months from the date I wrote this blog post.

So what needs to happen and by when to write a book in six months?

Preparation

The biggest mistake that many business authors make is writing their book without a plan. The first four Authority Principles are all about the preparation, which will make it easier to write your authority building book.

Things like…

Starting with the end in mind. You need to be clear about what you’re writing, who you’re writing it for and what problem you’re potentially addressing. You need to be clear on what you want your book to do for you, your business and the lives of your readers.

Then you need to get focused on your subject. If you’re like most business owners, there’s probably tons of information you can share, so what needs to go in this book? If you don’t know, do your market research before you get started.

What makes you different? What’s your hook or secret sauce? This is the third principle. When there are hundreds, if not thousands, of books written on your topic, what makes your book stand out?

And then it’s time to hone the structure. Your book should take your readers on a journey. What’s the first thing you need to cover? The second thing? Etc… When I work one-to-one with clients, we map out the book in a fair amount of detail before they start to write it.

Scheduling and scribing – the writing bit

Let’s now take the writing part. If you can dedicate half a day a week, then you should be able to write your book in five months.

And when I say four hours a week, I mean four hours a week of productive and uninterrupted working time. Not four hours when you decide to check your social media first, reply to your emails or put the washing out!

Let me break this down.

If you could write for four hours a week, based on writing 2,500 quality words, whether this is in one focused block or for an hour each day, then you would be able to write a 50,000-word book in five months.

It doesn’t have to be perfect at this stage, but it needs to flow, as otherwise the editing side of things will be painful. Believe me, I know!

Then it’s time for editing your book, peer review, and a few tweaks before reaching final manuscript stage. Plus thinking about your foreword, reviews, oh and let’s not forget marketing it!

With the copy-editing, proofreading, design and publishing taking around four months, you’ll be well in time for Christmas 2020!

How to make your book happen

If you are ready to make your book happen, how can I help you?

As you can imagine, there are lots of fiddly bits involved with getting a book out there. It’s not as simple as writing something, uploading it to Amazon and sitting back to let the money flood in!

If you’re writing a book to build your business, then it’s important to focus on how you can make this happen and what needs to be included in the book – and what needs to be left out – to ensure that it happens.

And having accountability, support and a place to go for advice will help you to get there. Plus marketing hints and tips so that you can build your community whilst writing it.

That’s why I launched the Smart Author System in 2020. When you’re ready to write your book, click here to join all the other authors self-funding their progress in a way that pretty much guarantees their future readers will love the content. And funds your publishing!

Lastly, here’s the Infographic I mentioned above.