Norco Herrington

Archive for the ‘Writing and Speaking’ Category

Many authors are not sure where to start when they are thinking about how to write a book. It doesn’t matter if you are thinking about self-publishing or being published by a big publishing company many of the fundamental rules still apply. The basic fundamentals must be done correctly and it is important to know how to start your publishing journey so you don’t make thousands of dollars worth of mistakes.

It is important for all authors or aspiring authors to understand where they are coming from and what they want to do with their book. The first thing is to decide whether they are writing their book to make money or to gain exposure. You can have degrees of both but you must decide where along the scale you fit. Are you trying to gain lots of exposure and make a little bit of money or make lots of money and get a little bit of exposure. Alternatively you can fit somewhere along those two extremes.

If you are looking to gain exposure you have to be aware that printing 10,000 copies of a book you have written and published cant be given away on a street corner to people who are passing by. If money is not an object than this of course can be done however, most people are somewhere in the middle of this issue of gaining exposure and making money. Even though you might not be thinking about writing in terms of making money you will still need to pertain to the base principle of people paying for your information. Exposure is a great thing to gain because down the road it can make your written words more valuable.

You may decide that you want to make lots of money from publishing your book. This will force you to put heavy emphasis on activities such as marketing and promoting. You will need to ensure that you have a strong marketing plan that works in tune with your pricing in order to dominate your particular target market. Writing and marketing a book is somewhat like a business and business goals need to be put in place just like any other business.

Although you are in the publishing processes most basic stage figuring these things out is going to give you the right direction to take. Both ends of the spectrum are very different, whether you are hoping for money or exposure, and most authors are somewhere in the middle. Knowing exactly what you want will only make it easier to make command decisions in publishing your writing and keeps you geared at what you want to get out of this endeavor.