Every author’s biggest fear is writing a book that no one reads. It takes time to write, edit, and publish a book. You want to make sure that time is well spent! You’re very busy, and you certainly don’t have a lot of time to waste on a project that’s a total flop. But, at the same time, if you never write your book, you could be missing out on a huge opportunity. So, how do you tell when it’s the right time to write your book? How do you make sure your book will have maximum impact on both your readers and your business or career?
Here are a few things you should consider…
WHAT’S THE MARKET LIKE?
One of the most important things you should consider when it comes to the timing of writing and publishing your book is the market for the niche you’re in. Ultimately, this comes down to having your finger on the pulse of your niche so you can stay on top of current trends—something you’ll want to be doing anyway if you want to be successful. You’ll also want to take note of the speed of any changes that are happening in your field. If you’re a social media expert, things change weekly or even daily. Other niches don’t change as quickly.
Is your book about a topic that’s really hot right now? You need to get working on your book ASAP. Trends come and go, and if your business has positioned you to be at the top of a trend, make sure you take action NOW! For example, if you’re a food blogger and you absolutely crush it with your avocado toast recipes, you’d better get your avocado toast cookbook out there before another big food trend comes rolling in.
These days, trends come and go so quickly. Imagine if you were a Periscope expert in 2015. You were riding high as that platform built a lot of buzz and grew very quickly. If you wrote and published a book about using Periscope for business in 2015 or early 2016, you would have done incredibly well for yourself. You would have established yourself as an expert in a very hot topic. If, however, you wrote a few hundred words here and there, deciding that you’d get around to writing the book eventually…well, who would buy that book if you finally got around to finishing it in 2018?
Books are so powerful. Publishing a book makes you an instant expert in that field. That’s especially true if you’re in an up and coming field and there aren’t a lot of books about your topic on the market. But, even if there are other books out there, publishing your book on a topic that there’s a big market for will really help set you apart from non-authors. So, if you need to catapult yourself to the top of a fast-moving market, a book is an amazing way to do that. But, for it to have maximum impact, now is the right time to publish your book.
ARE YOU SATISFIED WITH WHERE YOU ARE?
Are you totally happy with where you’re at? Is your career totally amazing? Are you completely booked with clients who are absolutely perfect for your business? Do you have all of the visibility you need to build your business, whatever it is you do?
Or, do you want something more or something different?
If the status quo is good for you, you may not need to write a book. You don’t need the authority and credibility it brings to you, your brand, and your business. You don’t need to be seen as one of the experts in your field. You don’t need to reach a wider audience, or to find new readers and followers. You don’t need to inspire a new group of people to do something amazing with their lives. You can just keep doing what you’re doing, because what you’re doing is good enough.
But, if you want more, if you want to grow your visibility, if you want to reach an even wider audience so you can expand your reach, a book will help you do that. Your book will be an amazing growth tool because of all of the weight that it carries. There’s a reason why the idiom “they wrote the book on it” exists. Being a published author on a topic brings you instant expert status. You set yourself apart from everyone else who didn’t know enough to write a full-length book, or who didn’t have the follow-through or drive to write it. If you want that expert status, the right time to write your book is NOW.
If you want to grow your business or blog or whatever it is you do, a book will absolutely do that, and it’s one of the best ways to do so. Your book can help you:
- Bring in more qualified leads for your business
- Establish yourself as a true expert in your niche
- Get more publicity for your business
- Add value to existing products or services you offer if you include a copy of your book
- Help you get in front of a new audience, especially if you sell your book on Amazon or in bookstores
- Provide value to potential clients at a low cost (it’s a great tripwire product!)
- Help you build a stronger relationship with a potential client than just about any other type of media
- And more!
So, even if you don’t make a ton of money from book sales or royalties, your book will absolutely still help you grow your bottom line.
WHAT’S YOUR COMPETITION DOING?
If all of the other bloggers or entrepreneurs in your niche have already published books, and if you want to be able to compete with them, you should consider getting your book written ASAP. Likewise, if some of the big names in your niche are just starting to publish books, or if a lot of them have eBooks but none have their books in print or on Amazon, try to get yours published soon so you can be ahead of the curve.
You just read about a few of the ways that a book can help you grow your blog or business. (And there are many, many more!) I’ll say it again: your book is one of the best ways that you can instantly build authority and credibility. It’s a great way to help you stand apart from others in your niche. So, if many or most people in your niche are publishing books, you need to write your book as soon as you can.
The analogy I like to use to explain this is to think about early adopters of social media platforms. Bloggers and business owners who joined Instagram back when it launched in 2010, or even a couple of years after that, have a HUGE leg up over someone who joined in the past year. It’s the same on Pinterest: early adopters can easily amass hundreds of thousands or millions of followers because they started to use that platform as it began to grow.
When you take a jump and begin to implement a strategy when it’s just starting to grow, you’re going to see huge results. If you wait until everyone is doing it, you probably won’t get the same results. Or, you’ll have to work harder to get them. It’s an amazing time for self publishing right now. Talented authors with great books are choosing to self publish—it’s no longer something that’s a last resort for authors who can’t get their books published anywhere else. Self-published books are making it to the top of national bestseller lists. Self publishing no longer carries the implication that it’s a terrible book.
Self publishing is also easier than ever with print-on-demand services like CreateSpace and its close cousin Kindle Direct Publishing. (You can now use KDP to publish printed copies of your book, as well as publish the book on Kindle.) Best of all, you can do self publish your book for free with these platforms if you’re willing to format the book yourself and use one of their free cover templates. So, you don’t have to go into debt if you want to self publish your book.
So, if you want your book to have the biggest impact possible on your credibility, authority, and expert status, get to work on it now! As the marketplace becomes more crowded with books, it will be more difficult for you to get yours to stand out. Be the blogger or entrepreneur who joined Instagram in 2012 and publish your book as soon as you can.
HOW MUCH TIME DO YOU HAVE?
The biggest excuse I hear from my audience is that they don’t have enough time to write a book. They look at their huge to-do lists and get totally overwhelmed when they think about the laundry list of tasks that they should be completing on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis if they want to grow their blog, audience, or business. I totally get it—I feel that way all the time, too!
Here’s the thing: there’s never enough time to do it all. You can’t possibly be on every social media channel PLUS blogging PLUS creating video PLUS podcasting PLUS doing everything else the marketing experts tell you do to. The secret to success is choosing to spend your time on the things that will have a really big impact. Take a look at the list of tasks you need to get done. Ask yourself which ones will have the biggest effect. Which tasks will actually help you get you closer to your goals faster?
What’s something you can produce that will have a HUGE impact on your expert status and authority?
A book.
If your big goals for your blog or business require you to become more visible, or to grow your expert status, a book will absolutely help you do that. When you consider the amount of time most bloggers and business owners put into writing their books and compare it to the impact that book has on their business, those books have an amazing ROI. It’s a much better return on time invested than spending hours on social media or publishing content on noisy platforms.
Some of you truly need a book for your businesses, but you just don’t have the time to put it together. If you’re at that point, you should strongly consider the pros and cons of hiring someone to help you write and/or produce your book. In many cases, if you’re looking for an effective way to up-level your business, hiring a ghostwriter, editor, or formatter/book designer is a very smart investment. I personally work with bloggers and entrepreneurs and help them turn their existing content into books, write new content for their books, format their books and get them uploaded for printing, and more. You can learn more about my book ghostwriting, editing, and formatting services here.
IS IT THE RIGHT TIME TO WRITE YOUR BOOK? TAKE THE QUIZ!
If you’re still not sure if it’s the right time for you to write your book, take my free quiz below! I’ll give you my honest feedback and let you know if I think you should wait a little longer, or if I think you should publish your book ASAP.
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