The Truth About Book Writing, Being an Author (4 page)

Chapter 5

Forget Everything You’ve Heard

T
here is a lot to know and understand, though it’s not rocket science. But before we can even talk about the correct things to do, we need to cancel the false information that runs rampant these days.

The secret to your success as an author begins with a clean slate of letting go of everything you’ve heard. This will immediately get rid of the confusion and frustration, leaving you excited, once again, and confident about getting your book written properly. Then make an agreement with yourself that you will stop listening to the know-it-alls and no longer copy what other authors are doing.

A Recipe For Disaster

An activity runs into trouble when there are too many chiefs giving orders. You’ve probably heard the saying, “Too many cooks spoil the broth.” What this maxim teaches us is that there cannot be numerous sources of information or instruction. This is because opposing orders can reek havoc or create stalemates.

And when you have false information coming from numerous individuals who should not even be giving advice or orders, this is a recipe for disaster.

Even when two different actions, by themselves are logical, if either of them were to not align with the goals and purpose of the activity, there would be conflict.

And thus, we have this law of success that begs to be told here:

Success Law #6:

EVERY ACTIVITY REQUIRES A LEADER WHO IS THE MOST ADEPT PERSON FOR GUIDING THE TEAM TO ITS APPOINTED GOAL.

How Did Things Get This Way?

It’s hard to imagine that such a high degree of failure could exist within an industry as long-standing as the world of book publishing.

Much could be written about how this came to be, but to keep things brief and moving forward with our purposes here in giving enough information to allow you to have a position of control in safeguarding your book and author goals, I’ll share the following quick facts.

It chiefly has to do with the fast-growing sector you’ve just become aware of—
The Fringe
—that’s skewing the statistics.

The Internet:
An Incubator for Incompetence

The Internet has brought forward “the inexperienced” in droves. Anyone with a computer and connection could easily hang a cyber sign and call themselves “a professional _____________,” and this has became a rampant affair.

These non-professionals ruin book dreams through their below standard, inferior work.

Misleading Information

Another way things have gotten so out of hand is in what experts have to say about things they know little about.

Experts, in a great many cases, have excellent products, systems or programs for what they truly have a deep understanding of. And they often know how important it is to have for their followers to have a book of their own for big success. Many times, their product involves a book in some way.

But every one of them I have come across, and often bought their systems, have no clue what it takes to write a great, impacting book necessary for success. And they go too far, stepping beyond their areas of knowledge and understanding, by including in their “teachings” erroneous information about how to get a book written.

Quite often, but not always, these experts tell their followers what they think their followers want to hear with regard to books.

I don’t believe they’re bad people or anything like that. I just think that they do it in order to help make it easier for their followers to buy what they have to sell and do what they have to teach, because they truly believe it will help them. And in most cases, it is very true—they have fantastic products.

Many of them I have the greatest respect and admiration for. To me, they are visionaries. But, once again, we have
false information
being spread around as to how a book should be written!

Sometimes, in an attempt to keep things pure and accurate, they will, with good intentions, joint venture with someone that they believe is knowledgeable and an “expert” about book writing.

But it always comes full circle in leading back to what they think their audience wants to hear. In other words, they are influenced by their own agenda as to the people they have speak at their teleseminars, webinars and in-person events. It is always someone who has a product or service that fulfills what they think we want to hear.

Good intentions or not, this squashes the most important parts of “the whole truth” and tips the scales, so to speak, in their favor by making their product look more desirable.

In my perspective, this is by far the wrong reason for teaching something. If the information is not the whole truth, then it should not be presented in a scholarly way to unsuspecting students.

Feel free to quote me on this ...

“Teaching has a much greater purpose than to make a quick buck. It has the purpose of empowerment! And that’s an incredible beautiful thing!! Teaching should be rewarded handsomely. But that reward should
not
be the motivation behind it.” —Robert S. Nahas

Simple, fast and easy are looked at by marketers as being good concepts to promote heavily because they feel it is attractive to most people.

This absolutely skews the facts, with half truths and white lies, over what it really takes to write a book that would be worth the effort for their customers.

They tell us things like:

• “It’s simple, easy and fast to write a book and get it published.”
  
• “All you need to do is hire someone for a few bucks to write your book for you.”
  
• “You can have your book written in about a week.”
  
• “It’s so easy!”
  

This type of information is designed to entice the unwary person who is excited about having a book of their own. And it is definitely part of the problem as to why so many authors fail, especially with any kind of long-term success.

Again, I don’t think that these individuals are bad people. They don’t rob banks or murder people. Honestly, I tend to imagine that because of their own lack of understanding about writing books, they themselves are susceptible to actually promoting false data without even realizing the negative impact they cause in this specific area.

Ignorance may or may not be bliss. It is more so like a petri dish for accumulating and encouraging the growth of false information cultures like mold. Half truths and little white lies seem harmless enough, but they are a slow and unsuspecting killer of dreams.

These experts’ lack of book writing knowledge opens the door to spreading their misunderstandings.

Bottom line: Programs that promote writing a book in a weekend or a few weeks or a month, etc., are programs that will only allow the creation of worthless books for approximately 95% of their trusting and unsuspecting audiences. And this is likely a conservative figure.

A Personal Experience

The last author I met, who purported so proudly that he had written his book in three weeks, had about the first seventy-five pages with value. The rest, which was three-fourths of the book, was repeat information and poorly done.

The end product was a book that was an embarrassment to his reputation and bad PR for his industry. It was a bird’s nest of babbling repetitious data that made you want to burn the book by the time you were half way through it.

And this man is one of the most knowledgeable individuals I’ve ever met in his field! It is truly a shame that millions of people will not learn his remarkable system on how to manage their finances better! It is truly a shame.

The other side of the coin is that if this book you’re reading now had been out sooner, and he had read it, his failure would not have happened if he followed the advice that this book gives.

So books can truly change lives, not only for their authors, but more so for their readers!

Boasting simple or easy or fast, influences us to approach our book projects in a rushed fashion. That is NOT the way to go about creating a book.

Just hiring someone to compile data is probably the worst idea of all the wrong suggestions that fly around. This way of getting your book written only produces meaningless, lifeless, purposeless, information that lacks the slightest degree of passion.

It could be compared to being served up your breakfast, lunch and dinner, all piled onto one plate. Not all that dissimilar to what we see in movies where the military or prison food lines have a disgruntled person behind the counter wearing a hairnet, who slops a scoop of mush onto the main character’s plate and nods to “move it along.”

But this “method” is completely unworkable and produces worthless material. The author is supposed to be involved and responsible for the information he or she is making available to others!

One of the things those who promote ‘how easy it is to get your book written’ are teaching people how to make completely inferior products (books) out of their valuable information!

This is a matter of ethics, especially when they come from a position of trusted authority. It is taking complete advantage of others.

Many of them might not realize the harm they are causing, but it is still vey destructive to the dreams of their followers.

A Very Important Note

I think it is important for me to interject that there are a great many individuals who are doing a great job in helping others to succeed.

This book has been designed to give aspiring authors a wakeup call. And as you can see, it pulls no punches. A lot of unfavorable things have to be brought up, and I will likely become unpopular to a few marketeers. But so be it, if it is an expense for helping to improve your odds for success.

Let’s be clear that “everyone” is not bad. “Everyone is not misleading you.” “All” people who offer information are not out to cause you harm. In fact, most of them are sharing their heart and souls to help others to make better lives for themselves.

So let’s not have any witch hunts here and ‘get all the gurus’ with pitch forks and torches over some sweeping conclusion about “all marketers.”

You are being informed about the things that are in existence in large enough degree to warrant your need to be well aware of them. And later in this book, you will be given some ways to help you separate the charlatans from the good guys who really want to help others.

Publishing Technology Has Escalated The Problem

Part of the problem is also due to the technology that has made it possible to publish anything in book form; especially poorly written manuscripts that were rejected by traditional publishers for good reason.

As a quick side note, traditional publishers and literary agents get the wrong end of the stick for turning down authors. They’re made out to be ogres and ruthless. But more often than not, aspiring authors come to them unprepared and with material that has no value or worth in the condition they’re in.

Sadly, the rejection is usually due to the way their information has been written, not the data, theme or concept. So again, we have failure due to incorrect book writing efforts.

The fact that there are so many options today for getting published adds to the fire of failure.

Fortifying the issue that there is no workable Quality Control system in place, most vanity presses will take anyone’s book—in any condition—and publish it.

Some of them will even offer editing and proofreading services. But how well do you think the workmanship would be in polishing a book by a company that could care less about quality books or author success?

Traditional publishers only make money if their client’s book sells. So their motivation for survival is in the right place. And their honesty should really be a sign that a book needs more work, not one of failure.

Vanity presses, on the other hand, make the vast bulk of their income from charging aspiring authors—who have been rejected by traditional publishers or are simply unaware of the other options that they have—book production fees. This is fine, but then the half truths and white lies start to come out from their sales people who promise big marketing campaigns as part of their packages, yet those campaigns are ineffective. And they also take a very large royalty (profit) as well.

They are not overcharging for what they offer. They are offering what they have realized is the amount that the majority of people will pay to become an author. So it is based on payment, not results. And their hearts are in the wrong place, in my strong opinion.

Almost every single aspiring author thinks they’re going to be a bestselling author or famous or some other gigantic dream that they have. But what they are being sold as a publishing package won’t even allow them to sell a few thousand books. This is a bit misleading, wouldn’t you agree?

If they were told the whole truth, then this would all be clean and wonderful. But it is implied by sales people that whatever their dream is, they will get that.

A Personal Story

Case in point: I had a client where I had written her book with her some years back. It was an amazing story that you cannot put down once you start reading it.

People jokingly have “complained” how they “stayed up all night” or “didn’t get any work done for three days” because they could’t stop reading her book.

This book was primed for becoming a bestseller. And though I could not get the author to do a single action that would have allowed her to create her own success, she got a call from a vanity press of which I will not mention. (You are free to contact me if you want to know who it was
[email protected]
). She was pretty much promised the world from someone in their sales force.

She told me that she was going to go with them and because she was being published by them, they were going to make her a bestselling author. She explained that millions of books were going to be sold, and so forth. This is what they led her to believe.

The truth was that she could achieve those results. The missing data was that she was going to have to be very involved in order to cause this. The little white lie was, they made it sound like they were going to make it all happen for her and she’d just sit back and accept the enormous royalty checks each and every quarter.