Thinking About Writing Books

Very rarely do I listen to podcasts and get inspired to reconsider something about the way that I run my businesses.  Generally speaking, I listen to podcasts to pass the time and lately, I’ve steered clear of listening to most business podcasts altogether, preferring to listen to more philosophical things or for fun, a podcast like “31 Thoughts” which is a hockey podcast.

The other day though, I saw a note in a private Facebook Group that I’m a member of saying that Steve Scott (also a member of that group) had recently appeared on James Altucher’s podcast and it was worth a listen.

First of all, if you don’t know who Steve Scott is, he’s a very prolific author of Kindle Books.  He is in the top 50 business authors on all of Amazon as rated by Amazon Rank, ahead of the likes of Robert Cialdini, Hal Elrod, Brendon Burchard, Jim Collins, Daymond John, Sheryl Sandberg, etc…

Steve is just a dude – he writes books that people want to read, he produces one every two or three months and he continuously works his process so that every book is better than the last one.

He has a small child that he looks after in the morning, takes to daycare, then hits a cafe to do some writing around midday because that’s what his schedule allows him to do.

But when you listen to him talk about his process you find yourself going, “Aha!  Interesting” and thinking about how you could apply that yourself to whatever you’re doing.

Just being honest, I write WAAAAY more than Steve does.  But he’s published 68 books in the last 6 years (including translations and bundles) and I’ve written one but haven’t released it publicly.

The average length of Steve’s books are about 25,000 words – in the last two years, from daily emails alone, I’ve written nearly 800,000 words.

Conservatively, I should have 20 books out of that.

That’s a kick in the guts for sure when you think about it that way.

But let me take you one better… This isn’t the first time I’ve said to myself, “Self, you really need to be turning this stuff into books.”

I said I was going to do it in August 2017 when I was inspired by another person I know who had just cracked $100k in the month of July alone from sales of his Kindle and Audible books.

I started the process and then it fell flat because I got that nasty “Aussie Flu” that ravaged North America and the UK this winter and it basically smashed me for two weeks.

But that’s just an excuse.  I forgot about it is more of the truth.

Listening to Steve talk about it was actually made me think, “Far out man, I gotta get on to this, I have about a half dozen book ideas I should write.”

The thing that needs to be balanced is not overwhelming myself.  I have a bunch of projects that I’m currently working on and I need to start finishing some because it’s become a bit easy to bounce from one thing to the next.

What was interesting about Steve’s talk was how regimented he is.  He treats everything like blocks of time where he needs to do things to move the needle.

I need to do this.  I have to become more structured with my time.  I need to set aside an hour a day to do “admin/maintenance” type tasks like emails and things, then an hour to work on these daily emails and social media for Casual Marketer, and then ideally, I’d like to set aside two hours a day for product creation.

The idea is that I’ll fit the books into that two-hour product creation section every day along with shooting videos and all the other stuff I do.

But I feel the need to get moving on writing these books.

One of my greatest days ever in my business career was the day my paperback sample arrived for my “No Hyperbole” book.  There was this incredible rush of adrenaline and dopamine when you have a book that YOU wrote with YOUR name on the cover in your actual hands.

And that day was followed up by the first box of books that I ordered arriving – seeing like 50 of your books waiting to go out is an incredible feeling.

The writing part is just a process.  You have to come up with your idea, map out your outline, write consistently and shape that content into a book.

For me, that part is easy.

The part I struggle with is the production aspects which is something I need to now work on so that I can get moving on this without it becoming just one more thing that is half done.

I do believe that everyone has a book in them and hopefully, this has helped you realize that this is a challenge you’re up for as well.  I’d be keen to hear your progress, so just reply to this email and let me know how you’re going.

2 thoughts on “Thinking About Writing Books”

  1. Hi Sean

    You hit the nail on the head, I have two books, basically compleated but its the next step that I am unsure of. So I am excited to receive your emails in the future, for the steps going forward.

    All the best, have an excellent day.

    Reply
    • Hi Clarissa,

      I’m actually taking a break from doing the final format of the book now to get it done. The next time I do this, I’m going to outsource these parts of the process because I hate doing this kind of thing, but the first time around, I think it’s important to know how to do it.

      Hopefully in the next few weeks I can write something about this!

      Reply

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