Step #8
Weigh Whether You Are the Best Person to Write This Book … Now

Like most aspiring authors, when inspiration hit, you probably assumed you were the right person to carry out your idea from start to finish. You also probably wanted to complete and publish your book as soon as possible. You saw yourself writing the manuscript, getting it traditionally or independently published, and then holding the bound book in your hands as you proudly showed your friends and family your name printed on its cover.

But are you really the best person to write your book … and should you write and publish it now? These important questions need answers, even if you don’t want to ask them or don’t yet understand why you should have a response.

At this point in the process, you are adept at evaluating yourself—especially through the eyes of those who are more critical or have a business perspective. It’s time for you to do this type of assessment one last time. When you first wrote your pitch in Step #2, I suggested that you address three related questions: “Why this book, why now, and why you?” It’s time to get clear about that third point: Why you?

In Step #8 of your Author Training Process, Weigh Whether You Are the Best Person to Write This Book … Now, you determine if you are ready and qualified to write your book at this moment, or if you need more qualifications, a higher expert status, an expert co-author, or more platform.

If you are a novelist, knowing if you are the right person to write your book may seem like a no-brainer. You may think that as long as you can write well and have a new story to tell, it’s yours to tell. However, if you choose to write about crime, for example, you must know how criminals or cops act. If your criminals steal pieces of art, you must be an expert on art and art museums—or become one through research. If you possess an expertise, put it to use in your fiction. Know that even novelists, like James Patterson, for example, use co-authors to help them churn out so many books per year; you might consider finding one that offers you expertise or platform.

If you are writing a memoir, no one else is more qualified to write your story. However, your story must be extraordinary, and, again, you must excel at your craft.

If you write any other type of nonfiction, you need a marketable idea you can put into easily read and enjoyed words and the credentials or expertise to make readers or publishers trust you enough to purchase your book or believe what you have written.

As in most endeavors, timing is everything. Publishing is no different. For many reasons, it may be the right or wrong time to approach agents or publishers or to self-publish. You may want to be first to market with your idea, or it may be timely, necessary, or in the news, for example. Yet, you might still need to improve your craft, build a bigger platform, or obtain additional credentials. This step in the Author Training Process asks you to take a hard look at these issues.

You actually began this particular evaluation in Step #4 when you did your competitive analysis. At that time, you looked at yourself in comparison to the other authors who have written similar books to the one you plan to write. You also thought about it in Step #1 as you delved into your willingness to take on the many tasks necessary to succeed as an author, such as platform-building and promotion.

At this point, take these evaluations further. Try to drill down deeper as you: 1) create and evaluate your author biography (or bio, and 2) create and evaluate your author platform description.

Together, these parts of your business plan give you a tool for assessing your ability to write your book and sell it to readers right now.

Who Are You?

You will need an author bio for many reasons. You’ll place one inside or on the back cover of your book; on your website or blog; on all of your social-media sites such as Twitter, Face-book, or Google Plus; at the bottom of every guest blog post you write, for a blog tour or virtual book tour when your book is released; on your Amazon Author Central page, and of course, in your book proposal (if you write one). You will need different lengths of bios for different purposes, such as for introductions when you speak, or for the bio at the end of a magazine article. Yet they should all be consistent to help your branding.

Once you have your bio written, it’s easier to see what might be missing from your experience or background that could hold you back from achieving the “job” you desire. In this case, that job is “published author.” See your bio as your résumé or a curriculum vitae. The training in this step requires seeing yourself through the eyes of a prospective business partner: an agent or publisher. Imagine they are reviewing your bio to determine if they want to go into business with you. How will they see you—as a good or bad partner, a qualified or unqualified partner, a highly trained or poorly trained partner?

To begin this training exercise, write a one-page, third-person bio about yourself. (The only place you might choose to use a first-person bio is on your website or blog.) Include all the pertinent information that proves you are qualified to write your book and become a publishing partner for an agent and, ultimately, a publisher. Write with this in mind even if you plan to self-publish; indie publishers need to view their credentials just as critically. Include your most important or relevant credentials first and then all other details in descending order of importance. Be sure to include the following:

• education
• personal background
• life experience
• business (if relevant)
• interests
• passions
• books you have published (along with the publishers and sales figures, if impressive)
• awards
• special skills
• conferences you’ve attended or participated in
• contests you’ve won
• professional memberships

Have someone help you with this exercise. They might offer a more objective view of your strongest credentials and experience. Or ask a variety of people who know you and what you have accomplished that they think qualifies you to write your book. Add these things to your bio.

You also can briefly mention family, interests, hobbies, and where you live. At the end of the bio, include a list of quotes or reviews about your work from publications or opinion makers, or include letters or publicity that others would find impressive.

Once you have your one-page bio, whittle it down to a 150-word bio, a 100-word bio, a 75-word bio, and then a 50-word bio. You might also try a 140-character bio for Twitter.

These shorter bios can act as brief promotional pitches. Think of them as your own personal elevator speeches or branding statements, not your book pitch because it’s all about you this time. Who are you? How do you want to be known? Are you “The XX Expert” or “The XX Coach”? This relates to the branding you did in the last step. Consider the spinoffs you think you might write. How would they help brand you? Will you write just fiction or nonfiction or both? How can you put all the books you write under one umbrella that people will recognize immediately by name—and will it be your name or a brand name? For example, I’m known as the “Inspiration to Creation Coach.” I write about a variety of topics, but they all inspire my readers to create something in their personal or professional lives as well as to fulfill their potential. Joan Stewart is “The Publicity Hound”; everything she offers has to do with publicity, and her logo is a hound. (I assume she can sniff out the best story!)

Once you have written these shorter bios, take an objective look at them. What do you see? Do you see someone qualified to write the book you have outlined and described in previous steps of this training manual? Will your experience instill trust in a publisher who’s considering investing money in you? Yes, investing in you. After all, you must produce, or create, the project the publisher will sell. The idea is yours, but the publisher isn’t buying just the idea; he is buying a finished manuscript. Your experience has to instill trust that you can write a valuable book—that you have something worthwhile and credible to say—and that you can say it in a unique, compelling, believable, new, and well-crafted manner. (And that you will help sell the book after it has been published.)

Go back to your notes about the authors of competing books in your category. How do your credentials measure up to theirs? Are they all professionals, such as PhDs, rabbis, priests, ex-athletes, doctors, or CEOs of companies? Or are they just average people who had interesting life experiences? Where do you fall on that spectrum? Do you have more or fewer credentials, and are your credentials unique?

If you are having doubts about your credentials, you don’t need to throw away your idea. You might still find a way to write your book. You may just need to look at other options or ways to write it. For example, to gain the expertise you need, you could:

• interview experts and conduct research
• find an expert co-author
• get an expert to write the foreword

If you are worried about your writing ability, you can:

• hire an editor or “book doctor”
• hire a ghostwriter
• dictate your project (and have the transcripts edited)

It’s possible that you simply need to take some time to get more experience. Maybe you need six months to hone your craft. Maybe you need to seek out an expert co-author or someone to write a foreword so you and your book gain some authority or credibility. Or maybe you need to get some extra credentials, like a life-coaching degree or a teaching certificate.

When examining your credentials, consider one other factor before making the decision to move forward with your project: author platform.

What Is Author Platform and Why Do You Need It?

A literary agent introduced me to the term when I submitted my first proposal to Sheree Bykofsky Associates, Inc. I got a call from Janet Rosen, a literary agent, who told me she loved my idea, my book title, my writing, and even my proposal (the first I’d ever written), but … “You have no platform,” she said. I had no idea what she was talking about and asked her to explain. “No one knows who you are,” she said simply. “So no one will buy your book.”

Remember, agents and publishers make money from book sales—your book sales. If you can’t help sell books, they don’t want to partner with you or invest in you. It’s too risky. Smaller independent publishers and even some midsize publishers are less risk adverse. The size of your platform, to some extent, indicates how well you can help sell books; it’s a built-in audience. And while there is much discussion about how much time should be devoted to platform-building and at what point in an author’s career, most publishers want to see an author platform above many other things, especially for nonfiction authors. Although this is not a book on platform or platform-building, I will go over a few basics to help you understand what platform is, why you need it, and how to evaluate yours.

First things first: What does “author platform” really mean? According to Chuck Sambuchino, author of Create Your Writer Platform, “a platform is your visibility as an author” and “your personal ability to sell books right this instant.” That’s why publishers want to know if you have one—and why you need to evaluate whether you are ready to become an author now.

Michael Hyatt, author of the best-selling Platform: Get Noticed in a Noisy World, defines it as “the thing you have to stand on to be heard.” In an interview in Publishers Weekly in May 2012, Hyatt says, “Until about six years ago, having a platform meant having a radio or TV show, a newspaper or magazine column, a best-selling book, or celebrity status. Today, a platform is about leading a tribe of engaged followers.”

Seth Godin popularized the word tribe in his book Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us, when he introduced the concept of creating a group of engaged followers to lead. (If you recall, Godin says you don’t create a tribe overnight. You must begin several years before the release of your book.)

I like the definition provided by Jane Friedman, web editor of the Virginia Quarterly Review and former publisher of Writer’s Digest (F+W Media). She says agents and editors are “looking for someone with visibility and authority who has proven reach to a target audience.” In the online world, there’s lots of talk about “visibility” and “reach” and “authority,” which is also called “influence.” Yet, this applies to the offline world as well. Here’s how these elements work when it comes to building platform in general:

Visibility: You do and say things that make people in your target market aware of you. This includes speaking, getting published in online and traditional publications, appearing on radio and television, and using social media, including social networks, blogging, podcasting, etc. Making yourself visible helps people get to know you and your work as well as to trust and like you. They become your fans, followers, peeps, subscribers. They become part of a community, or tribe, whose common denominator is you.

Reach: What you do and say gets shared or talked about. People mention you in social or traditional media. Your posts and status updates get tweeted, liked, +1’d. Thus, the ability you have to contact or touch people extends further than your current location or circle of acquaintances and beyond the bounds of your immediate community.

Authority: Your credentials and expertise give you authority in your field. Coupled with your visibility and reach, you gain authority in other areas as well and become influential.

Influence: You gain an ability to engage and affect others. They sign up for your mailing list, subscribe to your blog, follow you on social networks, take up your causes, listen to what you say, believe in you, agree with your opinion or what you write, and do what you ask.

Online, it is said that visibility + reach = influence, but this is true offline, too. If you can apply all of these elements—visibility, reach, authority, influence—to your target market, you create a platform. Therefore, having a platform means you become visible to the target audience you want your book to reach, your audience sees you as having authority, and your audience engages with you at a high level, thereby giving you influence in that market.

My definition of platform is: visibility, authority, and engagement with your book’s target audience that gives you influence in that market.

But how big does your platform have to be?

Publishing houses look at the size and elements that make up your platform to determine if they want to offer you a book contract, but that doesn’t mean you need a huge following to land a deal or to produce a successful self-published book. A huge following might help sell books … or not. Yet, midsize and large book publishers still look for a large, engaged platform because successful authors often have them-and they usually have Author Attitude.

What publishers don’t realize but that you should know (especially if you plan to self-publish) is that a small, engaged platform could serve you just as well—if not better. In 2009, researchers showed that large numbers of followers on social networks did not always equate to “influence” or sales. For years, marketers have touted the idea that the more fans and followers you garner on social networks, the higher likelihood you have of actually selling something—in this case your book. Today, this is called “The Million Follower Fallacy.” More researchers have gone on to study social-networking behavior and have corroborated the fact that those with the most followers don’t always have the most influence. Greater influence goes to those social networkers whose status updates get shared and whose followers mentioned them.

The researchers came to the conclusion that “influence is not gained spontaneously or accidentally but through concerted effort. In order to gain and maintain influence, users need to keep great personal involvement.” Take note: You need to work tenaciously at building platform.

An author platform also equates to how many people know and associate you and your name with something of value to them. Remember when you created a list of benefits? You made sure they were benefits your market wanted and needed and that no other authors had previously provided. This ties into authority—your expertise and credentials. Readers purchase books because they know and trust the author and associate value with that author. They don’t purchase because the author has four million followers. Content marketing, which includes giving your work away for free, and social media are based upon the idea of getting people to know, like, and trust you. That’s engagement. That’s platform.

Building that trust through a platform takes time, dedication, effort, money, and passion. Maybe you have worked on this, but maybe not … or maybe not enough. List all the things you’ve done to build your platform, and then list the things you plan to do in the next six to twelve months, such as:

• speaking engagements
• teaching
• teleseminars
• radio appearances
• television appearances
• blogging
• social networking
• podcasting
• hosting a radio show
• starting a forum or membership site
• writing for publications
• joining or participating in professional organizations

Make a record of the number of people in each of your social networks, on your mailing list, on your blog’s subscriber list, etc.

When you are done, you should have a list of pertinent information with dates, places, names of organizations, titles of talks or articles, and numbers associated with your different activities. Is there anything missing? Share these lists with a friend, loved one, or fellow writer. What else could you be doing? Are there holes in your platform-creation plan? Are there things you have done in the past that helped or hindered your platform? Sometimes an outside opinion can expose missing items.

You can now evaluate the size of your platform. Big? Small? Medium?

Next, evaluate the engagement level of your platform. Do people comment on your blog posts, share your status updates, attend your webinars, and respond to your e-mails?

Last, how many of the items you included as you described your platform in list form are related to or have taken place in your target market? Are these activities directed at the audience you want to reach with your book? The answers to these questions give you an indication of the real size or efficacy of your platform—and if you are ready to publish now.

If you determine that you have a small but engaged platform comprised of people in your market, it could be fine to self-publish now or to approach a small publisher and continue growing your platform. If your platform is medium in size and engaged or large and engaged, you could try to publish with a larger publishing house or you could self-publish. If, however, your platform is nonexistent or small and unengaged, you might want to wait six months to a year—or more—until you have the kind of platform that results in book sales and fans who help promote your book. Waiting until you have created a healthy platform typically provides the path to successful authorship, even if it is not a popular one to take or one you prefer. It does make good business sense, though, which is why authors with small, nonexistent, or unengaged platforms do not land publishing deals or sell many self-published books.

The Platform section of a book proposal can make or break a traditional publishing deal. No platform, no deal in many cases—especially with nonfiction books and midsize to large publishing houses. Fiction authors and some memoirists don’t have to worry quite as much about platform, but in the increasingly competitive world of publishing, platform has become even more important to these writers. So many celebrity memoirs exist because famous people have platforms—huge numbers of fans who will purchase anything that bears their name. For the same reason, cookbooks hardly ever get published these days without a celebrity chef as the author; publishers want a guarantee that the author has a built-in audience. The blog-to-book trend grew out of this same premise. To a publisher, a successful blog with thousands of readers a day represents a successfully test-marketed book idea, and the blog’s readers or subscribers equate to potential book readers (i.e., platform).

If your platform doesn’t quite make the grade, don’t despair. You can fix it … over time. All the activities mentioned above will help build your platform. You don’t have to do all of them. Pick the ones that resonate with you, and do them consistently. I personally find these some of my most fruitful platform-building activities:

• blogging
• choosing a few social networks on which to participate regularly
• guest-posting on blogs
• writing for online and traditional publications with large readerships
• radio interviews
• speaking

You may find something else appeals to you more and achieves better results, such as:

• YouTube videos
• podcasting
• moderating a group on a social network
• hosting an Internet radio show

While vital and necessary, remember that all of these things do take time away from writing. When it comes down to the wire, “enough platform” remains a subjective opinion, and each publisher will measure it with a different set of criteria. As Georgia Hughes, editorial director of New World Library, said, “If a proposal is really solid, even if the author has very little in the way of ‘followers,’ we might still be interested. And no matter the number of ‘followers’ or celebrity endorsers, if the proposal doesn’t have something to say that we feel is fresh and useful for the reader, we aren’t interested. There’s no formula—[it’s] still a very subjective process. Yes, certain types of things can make a big difference, but we need an overall sense of 1) is there a market, 2) does the author have something important to say, 3) does the author have a grasp of how to reach that market. It’s a tricky business.”

Do You Feel Compelled to Write and Publish Your Book?

Last, but not least, this part of Step #8 involves looking at how passionate you feel about writing and publishing your book. If you’ve gotten this far in the Author Training Process, it’s time to check in on how you feel about your project now and see if you still feel inspired by your idea and the prospect of writing your book. Do you still feel passionate about it? Do you feel inspiration—creativity and the impulse to write—flowing through you? Do you feel you must write your book, or are you compelled to do so? Does writing and publishing your book feel like a personal mission or a soul purpose?

If so, that’s a great thing. That type of passion will help you convince a publisher to take on your project, and it will help convince readers to buy your book.

Writing a Mission Statement is an optional part of a business plan, and it can be an important part of a book proposal. I encourage you to take the time to write a mission statement for four reasons.

1. Your mission statement clarifies why you need to write your book.
2. Your mission statement clarifies for your readers why you need to provide this information or tell this story to them.
3. Your mission statement becomes the foundation for your book; the book takes on your purpose, and you must make sure it fulfills or carries out that purpose by the time you have completed it.
4. Publishers will see your purpose and passion as a commitment to help the book succeed.

When you are done writing your Mission Statement, which need only be a paragraph or two long, read it to yourself and consider if it sounds like you have passion for your topic or story. Do the words sound like you are on a personal mission or have a sense of purpose you feel compelled to fulfill? Will readers or an agent or acquisitions editor read it and “get on board” with your cause or sense of urgency—your need to fulfill this mission? Will they understand why you are writing your book? Will they feel this statement shows your commitment to helping the book succeed through your promotional efforts? Does it make you feel confident that you will carry through on making your book a success?

Your sense of mission needs to come across the pages of your book. It needs to underlie everything—the benefits you listed, the TOC and all the content you write. It also needs to dovetail with the statement of purpose you wrote for the book itself. In other words, your purpose and the book’s purpose need to be almost identical.

Go back and reread the purpose statement you wrote for your book in Step #2. Compare it with your own mission statement. Do the two align? If not, you may need to rethink your project or do a bit of editing and revising so they do. Possibly, you need to revamp your book’s purpose or your mission statement.

Look at the work you did in Steps #5 and #6 to see if the TOC and Chapter Summaries or synopsis you produced carry out this mission. If not, something remains missing from your book—possibly your passion or purpose. If so, your book may not come across to readers as inspired. If you really feel “called” to write your book, make sure your passion and purpose comes through in every part of the business plan you have written as well as the manuscript you plan to produce.

If you feel it does, great! In fact, you should feel pretty inspired by now and ready to start writing! Passion, purpose, and inspiration tend to be contagious; they help you build excitement about your book. But if you don’t feel passionate and inspired about your project anymore, ask yourself why you actually want to write this book—and if you still want to do so. It’s possible that in the process of evaluating your idea, it changed too much or you lost interest. Or maybe you never had deep passion for the subject.

In his book APE: How to Publish a Book, Guy Kawasaki and Shawn Welch mention several reasons to write a book. These include:

1. to enrich readers’ lives by providing knowledge (fiction or nonfiction), understanding (fiction or nonfiction), entertainment (fiction), or laughter (fiction)
2. to provide intellectual challenge
3. to further a cause
4. for catharsis

Why do you want to write your book?

I love writing my Mission Statement. I feel as if it’s a chance for me to tell an agent or acquisitions editor a little bit more about me and why I feel so strongly that a book is necessary. It allows me to have a voice for a brief moment in the book proposal. Although written in the first person (and often the only first-person section), be sure you maintain a marketing focus; this part of your business plan must still argue for the salability of your book.

Answer this question before moving on: Could you just as easily not write your book as write it? If so, you better quit now! With all the work required to promote your book, you better have a large degree of passion and purpose for your topic and your message. When you combine these two elements, you feel inspired, and that inspiration comes across in your work. Plus, if you don’t feel inspired, neither will your readers, potential book buyers, or potential publishing partners.

Not only that, your passion, purpose, and inspiration will keep you moving through the hard stuff—activities that feel like work or that you don’t want to complete. It will help you do all those tasks that might feel tiresome or troublesome. It will remind you of why you are wearing all those different hats that leave your writer’s hat hanging on the rack—to fulfill your purpose and the book’s purpose.

Now you are ready to go on to the last step of your Author Training. WOOT!

Suggested Reading:

Create Your Writer Platform: The Key to Building an Audience, Selling More Books, and Finding Success as an Author by Chuck Sambuchino
Get Known Before the Book Deal: Use Your Personal Strengths to Grow an Author Platform by Christina Katz
Building Your Fanbase: A From-Scratch Guide for Indie Authors by Duolit and Shannon O’Neil
Platform: Get Noticed in a Noisy World by Michael Hyatt
The Author’s Guide to Building an Online Platform: Leveraging the Internet to Sell More Books by Stephanie Chandler