Are you knowledgeable about a particular subject matter? Do you dream of sharing that knowledge with others by becoming a published author? Well, now you have no more excuses, because YOU CAN. You’ll be amazed at what being a published author could do for you on your journey of expert positioning, provided that you do things right.
I present a public workshop in which I guide participants through the process, but also present the information in the form of a one-on-one coaching session. During my presentation, I focus on important steps to consider on your book writing and publishing journey, as well as on the mistakes that many aspirant authors make and how you could avoid such mistakes. I regularly receive enquiries from aspirant authors who need help with regards to tailoring their manuscript to a particular audience. This is one of the things that should be considered at the very beginning and could save you a lot of time.
One new author came to me about two years ago and asked me to assist them on their PR journey with getting publicity for their book. It is always wonderful to take on a new client and the fact that this person had identified me as the go-to person, was a wonderful compliment. However, I had to decline, because when I read their book, I wasn’t sure who they thought their audience were. There were “cartoonish” illustrations in the book and when you combine that to the font size, I got the feeling that the book was suitable for children, between 7 and 11 years old. However, there was a serious love theme that I thought was inappropriate to children of that age group. There were also a number of spelling errors. The overall book had a beautiful cover and it generally looked great.
I unfortunately had to decline the request to help promote the book for obvious reasons and suggested that they made the necessary changes, before I consider. Well, this was not received very well.
I want to see more published authors I want to see more published authors and I want to guide more people on their journey. Therefore I decided to share a few important steps with you (with a brief outline). It will save you a lot of time, trouble and money. I hope that you’ll find them helpful.
Planning You have to plan your book. If you neglect this step, you could end up with a product that would be considered as not good enough.
Pre-writing During this stage you make notes about what it is that you want to write about, decide what you want to focus on in each chapter and elaborate on that.
Revising During the revising stage, you may feel the need to add things of even take some things away. This process leads to your final manuscript, before the proofreading stage.
Proof-reading Every manuscript that you complete should be proof-read. It is also advisable to find someone who is qualified to do proof-reading and editing to do this.
Publishing Who will publish your book? Will you self-publish, be published by a national publishing house or will you publish your book on Kindle? What are the steps when it comes to these options?
Presenting This relates to the published copy of your book. What does it look like? Where will you sell your book? How to get free publicity? This includes interviews on radio, television and being featured in a magazine or newspaper.
And hopefully…
Profiting How much money you make from your book, has a direct link to the above steps. However, if you are a celebrity or have a public image, you may be able to sell more copies of your book. Best wishes on your journey. My journey of Expert Positioning started when I was in grade 3 Over the last few days, I’ve been looking at old photos and came across so many beautiful memories, captured in some of those photos. Among these were a newspaper article and a photo taken during the launch of my first book, entitled: Sukses, jou keuse (Success, it’s your choice). The occasion dates back to 2003. I was still living in my beautiful hometown: George. Wow! What a journey?
The launch of my first book that I have self-published. The date was Tuesday, 04 March 2003 and I was still living in my beautiful hometown: George, in the Southern Cape. With me is Robert, a winner of a copy of my book.
I look back and I remember the time when my book-dream started. I always loved writing and I remember when I was in the third grade, I wrote a beautiful poem, entitled: My ouma se kat (Grandma’s cat). I also drew a beautiful picture of a ginger-coloured cat next to the poem. I was very impressed with my work, but when I showed it to my friends, they loved at me and some asked me: “Who do you think you are?…”
This question put me right back into my little corner of severe low self-esteem and I didn’t come out of that corner to show my poem to my mom or to my third grade teacher. They would have told me that it was beautiful and good. I never stopped writing, but since then I just stopped showing my work to friends – I just kept it to myself.
I was twenty-six years old when I started working on my self-esteem. And what a process that was? I remember revisiting all those incidents since childhood that led to me being diagnosed with low self-esteem, evaluating and recognising them as lies and putting the pain behind me. And after a personal growth and counselling course at Life Line, I knew that I was ready to get out there and pursue my speaking-dream. I started speaking at schools and later also at Correctional Services on a voluntary basis and mostly about self-esteem. That was a wonderful experience.
My book-dream At age twenty-seven, my book-dream was born. Today I look back in amazement, because that was a time when not many people looking like me or with my kind of background were writing books. I think that I had a lot of guts – still do.
At first I was afraid to tell anybody about this dream. I always knew that I wanted to write a book, I just didn’t know what I wanted to write about. And one day, I made the decision to start writing. I look back at that time and I see wonderful commitment. I mentioned to a few individuals that I was writing a book, and got a lot of negative responses, like: “You…really? Nobody would be interested in publishing your book, because you are not famous…”
Even though I was taken aback by such comments, I continued on my journey. I told myself that the people who doubt me just don’t know how hard I am working and they just do not know how determined I am. Apart from the discouraging comments, there were also positive and encouraging comments. And I learned about the importance of speaking to the right people – of not telling just everybody about my dreams, about what I am working on.
And I managed to secure publicity. A newspaper article that appeared in the George Herald after the launch of my book.
I love books The collection of books that I currently own could give birth to a mini library. From time to time, I also give books away for charity purposes, but it is always very difficult. I look at the Psychology text books that I have used for my studies during previous years and I know that I can never sell them; while I often see advertisements of students who are selling their text books. I guess that this has something to do with my love for books.
I remember that my love for books is one that dates back to my childhood. My mom used to say that she wonders what I would do one day, because of my love for books and because I loved making my own picture books, using pictures from old magazines. What a pity that I no longer have those? It would have been nice to look back and see what exactly went on in my mind as a six, seven or eight-year old.
Today I love to guide others on their journey, because I believe that everyone could and should write a book. I wish you well on your book writing and publishing journey.
expertpositioning 