So You Want To Write A Book...

woman reading a book

Writing a book may not be at the top of everybody’s priorities nowadays, but if you hit the market at the right time and with the right content, it can be quite a lucrative little business for you. Not only that, but it’s something that can be done in your spare time and from home - what more could you ask for? A lot of people do it for enjoyment, and to think that you could make money off of a hobby is something that definitely needs to be aimed towards. It’s the no-brainer win-win situation, but it’s something that does take a lot of work, time and dedication in order to complete. So with that in mind, how do you go about writing a book? 

Publish Your Blog 

What a lot of people are doing nowadays is publishing the entries that they have already written and published online, on their blog. This is especially good if you have a big following on the internet, and there are sites that are able to make it happen for you without having to find a literary agent beforehand. So, instead of having people trawling through past posts that you have uploaded, you can instead recommend that they buy you book if they like what they see. Promoting yourself via social media, on sites such as Facebook and Twitter, has been proven to be successful for those who have already applied themselves online - it’s a simple shout out to your followers, and those who are interested will buy in. It’s helpful if your blog posts have been published via other mediums, e.g. online newspapers, to gain a bit of a much-needed momentum when it comes to selling. 

Write A Zine 

If you have a few niche ideas that you would like to put together, you could instead consider selling a zine rather than a full book. A lot of zines are contributed to, meaning that you wouldn’t have to do as much work but would still have a great collaboration of ideas. There have been a number of successful zines throughout the years, such as Do What You Want and Fanpages; they hit a target demographic and concentrate on maybe one broad subject in which different angles can be taken. It’s a brilliant idea for those who would prefer to offload their thoughts into something more concentrated rather than stretching it out across pages. For those who aren’t a fan of dialogue, but more so getting to the point with loaded information, this is definitely the best idea. 

Find An Agent

If you are still set on writing a novel or children’s book, you will need to find a literary agent in order to manage it for you. Most publishers won’t deal with somebody unless they have an agent, as otherwise they would be dealing with thousands of different people pitching their ideas on a daily basis. If you have an idea, it needs to be penned down and written out; at least the plot of the story needs to be available for them to look over. If it’s your first time approaching the agent, you will need to produce them a fully completed book that has been edited and proofread to within an inch of your life. That way you know that you are presenting them the best that you can do. 

Think About Copyright 

As soon as you have written the words, you will need to look to getting some piracy protection. DMCA Takedown Service and other copyright protection services are well worth the money, especially if you have already shared snippets online. Unfortunately, computers nowadays are easily hackable, and if you have an idea that somebody knows to be worth money, they will steal it. It also goes for online piracy; unless you have a system put in place to protect what you have created, it can easily be published elsewhere with no nod to you as the creator. This can take thousands in legal fees to stop, but reversing it is another problem altogether; with cached pages on the internet as well as other sources for it to spread to, it can be a hard thing to control unless you have the right precautionary and preventative measures set in place. 

Set Yourself A Deadline 

If you are writing for monetary purposes rather than a hobby, you will need to set yourself a deadline in order to motivate yourself. Not only does this mean that you are working towards a goal, but it stops you from floating off and doing different things; it can be so easy to put writing a book to the back of your mind when you’re not doing it for a living. Change your way of thinking about it, as hard as it may be to do so. Even if you are writing for pleasure, trying to cut yourself off time-wise can actually be a good thing to do, as limiting as it may seem; it will help you to wrap up the plot and characters more readily. 

Read For Ideas 

It’s not a bad thing to read other books for tips and ideas that you might contribute towards your own. Magpie-ing creativity is something that has gone on for centuries, and rather than thinking that you’re stealing ideas (which you shouldn’t do!), it’s just a cog in the wheel of your inspiration. The more literature that you read, the more that you will understand the semantics of the written language. Nobody got to where they are currently without reading a book in the world of authors; so as you go along with your writing, pick up a novel to read on the night time. The more interested you are in the storyline, the more that you need to think about what it was that gripped you, and how you can use this in your own writing. If you need to brush up on your grammar and punctuation skills, there are courses online for you to take in order to do so.

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