"Fast and easy" are the new buzz words in marketing copy. You may have run across programs that promise untold riches will be yours if you write a book. And that writing a book is just so easy it’s effortless. I read a great article by Diana Schneidman who pointed out that we need to get "real" about the terms fast and easy. She was talking about starting a freelance business, but the same advice can be applied to the book publishing business as well.
I’ve written and published 10 books in less than three years. Obviously, for me, writing and publishing books really is fast and easy. I’d like to point out that just because something is easy for me does not necessarily mean it’s easy for you. Like Diana said, we need to get real about the terms fast and easy.
I write quickly. I also write a lot. I have been writing a minimum of 1,000 words a week for about 10 years because I have been producing weekly newsletters for that long. So for me, writing an article like this one is easy. However, nothing is easy without practice. Because I’ve been writing articles and newsletters for years, I have had a lot of writing practice.
Most people understand the idea of practice in the context of exercise. As an athletically challenged non-jockette, my muscles let me know when I haven’t exercised lately. Exercising is far more difficult when I haven’t exercised in a while. (I’ve told my husband many times that, for me, "potato" is the default state my body wants to return to if I stop exercising, even for a short time.) If you have not started a blog or a newsletter yet, your "writing muscles" may have atrophied in much the same way. You can’t expect something to be "easy" if you don’t do it often.
When people sign up for the Publishize newsletter, they receive a PDF called "The 7 Steps to Successful Self-Publishing." None of the steps are difficult. But the first time you go through them, you will have questions and you may need help or additional information. Publishing my first book was vastly more challenging than publishing the tenth, mostly because I didn’t know what I didn’t know yet. You learn by doing.
"Easy" also does not mean no effort. Publishing books takes work. For me, it’s not as difficult as commuting and sitting in a cubicle or working retail for eight hours a day, but writing and publishing certainly do require an expenditure of time, brainpower, and money.
Fast also is a relative term. Like I said, I write quickly and I have a more flexible schedule than many people. I can sit down in a quiet office and blast out 1,000 words in as little as a half hour. However, I reach a point of diminishing returns. The most I have ever written in one weekend is 9,000 words. When I’ve had deadlines for book projects, I have written vast amounts of text over several days or weeks. But I also had no life. All I did was write. It was awful.
The secret to creating that level of writing output is blocking out what I plan to say ahead of time. In every case, when I needed to write a lot in a short period of time, I created an outline first. Then I could simply "fill in the blanks." However like I said, it was a lot of work. If you want something to happen fast, it requires more effort on your part.
There’s an old saying that if you want something fast, good, and cheap, you need to pick any two. I’d say you can replace "cheap" with "easy." Most "fast and easy" books I’ve seen are not good. People now are suspicious of health or weight-loss products with results that sound too good to be true, yet don’t cast the same critical eye to book coaching programs.
Because of my experience, I can help you write and publish a book more easily and quickly than you could without my advice. I’ve also written a book about book publishing, so I have taken my own suggestion and written a book to promote my expertise. For less than $25, you can decide for yourself if you think I actually know what I’m talking about and you like my approach to publishing.
A good book coaching program gives you support, information, and accountability if you need it. But writing a book still requires work on your part. Don’t be swayed by hyped-up marketing copy, and get "real" when you see the words fast and easy. The only way writing a book is going to be truly "effortless" is if you hire a ghostwriter to write it for you.
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