Less than a decade ago, if you wanted to publish a book, you either needed to break through the challenging gate-keepers of conventional publishers, or do it yourself, either by co-ordinating all the design, printing and production or (more ominously) contracting with a vanity publisher, who would charge hefty fees to generate your book, which would often fill boxes, unread, in your garage.
The rules have changed with online publishing and print-on-demand services. Now, you can either self-publish or work with relatively inexpensive contractors/services to create your book. Many of these self-published books have been commercial successes.
However, I doubt most readers here want to switch careers to become publishers. Your reason for publishing your story relates to something much more down-to-earth: Marketing effectiveness and your reputation as a subject-matter authority.
Your book provides credibility, reference-pointing, authority, and a natural introduction to new business opportunities.
However, even though the external barriers to self-publishing have mostly been removed, there still are blocks to the process — although most of these are within your psychology.
It takes time, discipline and a new routine to generate your initial copy. Then, and perhaps equally challenging, you need to vet/edit the book — and this can be a painful process. There are the business-side details including cover design, indexing, and co-ordinating printing and/or online distribution. The first-time around, these matters can seem daunting.
There’s a paradox, as well, in the book-writing business. I struggled with the technicalities regarding my first book, and had fewer problems with the second, brief, e-volume about social media. But I’ll admit my second “real” book has proven harder than the first to conceive, plan and write.
The reason: Most of us I believe have one book in us — it relates to our passion, life story, experience and the like. While not many others want to read a boring autobiography, the autobiographical experience provides the framework for you to share your most interesting and relevant theme-based stories (such as about effective construction marketing). Once you have these stories out of you, it can be a challenge to generate fresh material — until you develop your own literary theme/speciality. Then you have the seeds for a series on the relevant topic.
In other words, you’ll probably find your first book won’t be hard to write once you get down to business. But you may need some support.
Options include:
Writing coaches — I can reference a few for you if you wish, and provide some direct free consultation, if you are just getting started
Publishing services — be careful; if you hand everything over to the service, you’ll increase fees and reduce control. You don’t need to hand over the entire job; but you will want to sub-contract speciality tasks.
Printing/distribution services — Amazon.com has the largest and most visible services (and can be effective for distribution), but behind the scenes, there are much better deals (and you’ll still have your books posted and distributed on Amazon.)
How should you get started? Perhaps the first step would be to connect with me; in a 15 to 30 minute (no charge) conversation, you’ll be able to explore/determine your concept, the project’s feasibility, and next steps. You can reach me at buckshon@constructionmarketingideas.com or phone (888) 432-3555 ext 224.
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