• By Earma Brown
• Published 08/6/2009
• Writing

Is your book dream fading fast as the year winds down? Don’t worry there’s still time to write your book this year. First things first, you must calm down and focus. If you’re feeling overwhelmed by it all, correct the mistakes below, write your book and prosper in peace: 1. No commitment. It takes a commitment to write a book and especially if you want to write it fast. Make your commitment and write it down. If you don’t write it down, you may lose the fortitude to finish. Gerald Ford said it like this, “Begin to act boldly. The moment one definitely commits oneself, heaven moves in his behalf.” 2. No targeted audience. Not everyone will be interested in reading your book. Even so, I’m convinced there’s a community of people in your field waiting for you to solve their problem. What problems does your message solve for them? Develop an audience profile (picture) and keep it in front of you as you write. That way you can visualize a real person to solve problems for. Additionally, knowing your market before you write will help you write focused, compelling chapters. Writing to a specific person or group of people will keep your readers reading to the end. Write too general and your readers may put your book down and never pick it back up to finish. 3. No written plan. Do you have your book dream plan written down? Write a book writing and even production schedule if you are self publishing. Educate yourself about book writing. Enroll or get resources like e-courses, books and tele-seminars. Invest in your book project. Use professional help with getting your cover design, book layout. Remember, book covers sell more books than any other element. Give your book the selling chance it deserves. 4. No pressure limits. Give yourself a break. You don’t have to write a 350 page book like your colleague to be successful. It doesn’t even have to be 150 pages. Simply write a short book approximately 100 pages long and fill it with your insightful information, your expertise and your experiences. You get to shorten your examples and stories.

With a short book, you have no pressure to add every piece of information you know about your topic. Instead, if you have too much information divide yo

ur material into two books. Your customers will love you for it. They’ll buy both books because they are easy to read and short. 5. No book marketing plan. You must realize your book is a product and as a product it has to be marketed. Your plan provides a map for everything you do afterwards. Your book marketing plan is what I describe as your map. It describes your book, what you will do after the book is completed and published. It also describes who (target audience) you hope to sell your book to. In short, you can say your book marketing plan is your roadmap to success and profits. 6. No vision. Can you see your book completed? Take the time to let your imagination run wild in a good way. Envision your completed book and what happens after it’s published. Write it down and make it plain. Write when you’ll complete it. Name specific outcomes you get after completing your book. For instance, envision yourself watching your bank balance grow from book sales. Write, “I see myself with increased income and more clients.” Anyway you get the idea; create your vision statement including see, hear and feel. 7. No publishing plan. You might be surprised at how much publishing plan has to do with how you write your book. Knowing how you plan to publish, may give you extra boost you need to finish. Whether you choose self-publishing or a traditional publisher, there are pros and cons to either method of publishing your book. If you choose to pursue a traditional publisher for your book, you should know your book proposal is a sales (direct-marketing) document with a sole purpose. It’s single purpose is to convince a publisher that your book will earn a profit, if published. The proposal should focus on the size and buying power of the targeted market you will attract, the problem your book solves, how your book plans to solve the problem, how different your book is from others already published on the subject and how you plan to promote your book.

Don’t put it off any longer. Take your dream off the waiting list. If you continue to wait, you can be this time next year without making your dream of writing a successful book come true. You have the plan, the knowledge and the solution. Now write it all down in a book. Your audience is waiting. Stop giving in to overwhelm; correct the mistakes above and write a book that sells well. Make it different. Make it count. Make it yours.