3 Top Things Every New Author Should Do

Here are the 3 Top Things every author who is new to publishing books should do

1. Put away your wallet until you understand the market well
2. Don’t look for Shortcuts and Easy buttons and Fast Solutions
3. Don’t give money to anyone until and unless they have a stake in your success

Let’s elaborate

Put Away Your Wallet until You Understand the Market Well

At the beginning, most authors are clueless and think everything is very easy. They think they can just give someone a bundle of money and everything will magically happen

That’s not the case

People who are promising you that you will easily find success – are doing it so they can run away with your money

So, at the beginning, the single best thing a new author can do is – Put Away Your Wallet/Money. Wait and first read up on the Publishing business and understand what is what

Treat your hard earned money as your HARD EARNED MONEY

Don’t look for Shortcuts. Don’t look for the Easy Button. Don’t look for Fast Solutions

Don’t look for things that don’t exist

1. There are absolutely no short cuts. If there were you would see lots and lots of examples of big successes who are relatively young. In reality, we see very few. Most of the successes we see are authors with decades of experience of writing – more importantly, they have decades of overcoming adversity before they hit it big
2. In technology you have all these companies with 20 year old founders and 25 year old CEOs. In writing all the very successful authors are in their 40s and 50s and 60s
3. There is no ‘lifestyle business of quickly writing ebooks and making $10,000 a month’. If there were, those people would be sitting in Bali sipping Margaritas and not trying to fleece you with $100 and $400 marketing courses. Do you really think someone who has found an easy way to make $10,000 a month wants to spend his/her time coaching new authors on how to replicate that success? They have $10,000+ a month and of all the things in the world they could choose to do with their time, they chose – giving away that secret for $100 a pop to complete strangers
4. Get Rich Quick salesmen are always suggesting things like Facebook Ads and Dominating a Niche. Firstly, it doesn’t work. It worked in 2009, 2010, 2011 when everything was new. Now there are more people selling those courses than writing books – at least seems like it. Every course they sell introduces more people to the idea. The Niches are not growing. Facebook inventory is not growing. The only thing growing is the number of authors searching for these ‘quick and easy’ niches
5. There are no fast solutions. We’ve gone from people claiming you can make money from mass produced books written by ghostwriters to people claiming you can make money from low content books to people claiming you can make money from no content books. When you have people promising that you can make money from books that don’t even have words in them – then you know we’ve jumped the shark

As human beings it is very appealing to us to imagine that this is a market where there is a gold rush and every prospector gets rich

That is not the case at all. What you are buying is a dream. What you are paying with is lost opportunity cost

The time and money and energy you spend chasing this imaginary dream of ‘Easy and Quick Success as an Author’, prevents you from becoming a good author, which in turn prevents you from becoming successful

Don’t Give Money to Anyone Until and Unless they have a Stake in Your Success

Consider what the most reputable people in Publishing have in common

1. Established and reputable Publishers do not ask for money to publish. They take a stake of book sales. They only make money if your book sells
2. Reputable Literary Agents don’t take money to represent you. They take a stake of book sales. They only make money if your book sells
3. Reputable ebook stores don’t take money to put your book in their store. They take a stake of book sales. They only make money if your book sells

That is the IDEAL scenario

Whenever possible, look for scenarios where there are stakeholders – where they make money only if your book sells

Then those people have a real and constant motivation to make your book a success

Please Note: There are some skills which you cannot get until and unless you pay. These include editing, covers, design, marketing. For these cases do your due diligence and make sure the service provider delivers good quality services