POWERHOUSE GLOBAL STARS
HOW TO PLAN YOUR BOOK FOR SUCCESS There’s a well known saying—fail to plan and you plan to fail. How does this apply to the world of book writing?
T
— BY KAREN INCE
he market is flooded. Thanks to the likes of Amazon, Ingram Spark, Smashwords or Lulu, anyone can write anything.
Once written they can publish it in an afternoon. In 2019 more than 1.6 million books were published, worldwide. Sadly, this means there are thousands of poorly written books out there. It also means that many wonderful books fail to get noticed. If you’re intending to write a book, knowing how to promote it will be important. However, there is no point in investing time, effort and money to climb that mountain, if what you’re carrying with you is badly executed. There may be a few exceptional people who can write an excellent book just by sitting down and writing. For the rest of us, the process is much quicker, easier, and more successful if we create a plan. I think of a solid plan as having three parts.
PART 1: THE PRE-PLAN Here you need to ask yourself some serious questions, because the answers will inform a lot of what comes afterwards. • Why are you writing this book? You need to have a strong personal motivation. There will be moments when you question why you’re
34 APR-JUN 2021
doing it, times when it seems difficult, when it would be easier to forget all about it. What is going to keep you going? • What do you want your book to do for you? Will it open doors to speaking engagements? Attract new customers? Allow you to scale your business? The clearer you are about the purpose it serves, the better your plan will be to achieve that goal. • Are you intending to approach a traditional publisher, or go the independent route? This may have a major impact on your writing; for example, it is possible for non-fiction authors to get a publishing deal on the outline rather
