Thinking of writing a story? This one is for you.

Recently I’ve talked to/read of at least four people thinking about writing a book.

Publishing a book isn’t hard.

In fact, publishing a book has become a lot easier in the last 5 years.

In the past, if you wanted to publish a book you went through a publisher, which could be stressful if you were sending your manuscript and getting knocked back multiple times before finding the right one.

Then, you could go through a publisher or self-publish.

Self-publishing was expensive, after writing, editing, and designing your book, you then had to pay a printer to print multiple copies. The more you printed (up to a point) the cheaper it was per copy. But you were still looking at a few thousand and the side of your living room taken up by boxes of books.

Now, however, there are so many ways for self-publishing authors (and artists) to get their book out there with minimal upfront costs, and needing no storage space (and that’s another entire story).

Writing a book, now that’s the tricky part.

It really shouldn’t be, but when we write we put so much of ourselves into the page. If we’re writing fiction or publishing our art, we’re showing our imagination, in non-fiction we show our research or knowledge. And when we put part of ourselves out there it’s vulnerable, we want to protect that part from criticism.

But what if no one likes it?

Years ago I worked in a library and thought I better read different authors so I could suggest books to people. I picked up a book by James Patterson. ‘This will be good’, I thought. He’s written a lot, he’s a best-selling author, and people rave about his books. I hated it.

On the flip side, I don’t love horror. I used to be ok with it, but as I’ve become older I have less and less stomach for it. But one day while scrolling through Twitter I found Australian horror author Alan Baxter (Twitter link).

I liked his sense of humor, and found out about one of his recent books The Roo.

The backstory to why he wrote it appealed to me, so I bought and read it.

Other than having to skim over the really really gruesome parts I enjoyed it, and bought another book of his short stories. I can still only read one every six months, it takes a while for me to process that level of detail, but he would be one of my favorite authors.

There will be people who like your book, and there will be people who don’t. That’s statistics, and it’s not a reason to stop you from writing your book.

Ok, but…

But what about the title?
That’s not important before you start. If you have a title, great. If you don’t, just write the book.

But what about the cover?
That doesn’t matter until the end, all the formatting and design happen after it’s been written. Just write the book.

But I don’t know if I want to self-publish or go through a publisher.
Still doesn’t matter. You can make that decision when you’ve finished. You need to have written something before it can be published either way.

Just write the damn book.