So…You Want to Write a Book?

Let me tell you about my own personal experiences with book writing…

When I was a kid, I hated writing. In fact, it is safe to say that I was not so fond of school in general. In college, I was an education major. I was referred to the writing center for my poor writing. I did some things they wanted me to. I tried to improve my spelling and grammar. I worked on some English exercises.

Then, one day, the director of the center asked me to write about anything I wanted. Before, my writing was tied to my courses. This was a novel idea for me. Write about what I wanted to write about? So, I did. I can’t recall my topic. I think it was something about things that pissed me off about the college, or my professors. I started that paper and it seemed to open the flood gates.

Lesson 1: Write about things you are passionate about.

Well, I graduated (I had good grades). I always say that my wife graduated magna cum laude, and I graduated mighty darn lucky. But believe it or not, I left college a writer.

I went on to graduate school and eventually earned a doctorate and became a professor. That involved a whole lot of writing- both as a graduate student (and seminarian for 3 years) and as an academic. I probably wrote 60 academic articles and 2 book chapters. Even then, I did research and wrote about things I was interested in.

My son, Aaron, has often served as my editor. All writers develop a style, I think. Mine is pretty colloquial. Even, if I am writing about research, as I did in academic journals, my style is rather “folksy”. It bugs the living hell out of Aaron. He is a software engineer and likes everything nice, neat, and tied up. I don’t write that way.

On the side, I also did some writing of a more personal nature. The smallish denomination of which I was a minister discovered that I was a statistician. They paid for me to do a study of small membership congregations (spoiler alert — they all want a pastor who is thirty with twenty-five years of experience, married to someone who will teach Sunday school, and who has kids, an unlikely scenario).

I turned that study into a 160-page book written for regular people (as opposed to academics). I discussed things folks were interested in. Mostly, I discussed how to deal with un-redeemable dying congregations. I tried to speak some words of comfort.

Thing is, I self-published that book. It sold well. It was the best-selling book in the denominational resource center. That was years ago. I no longer even have a copy. It’s on a floppy disc. Guess I’m out of luck on updating that one. And I lost money.

Not lots. After-all, it did sell well. But the print on demand, self-publishing industry is a bit of a hole that is hard to crawl out of. They promise returns. Rarely do you make them. I guess that Amazon and some other places will publish about anything nowadays. That stuff doesn’t seem to sell either.

And there is surely a certain stigma attached to self-publishing. Those publishing companies and the authors that use them often are not taken seriously in the publishing/writing world (there are exceptions, of course).

A quick search demonstrates that self-published books are almost universal failures. Sad, but true. In fact, truth be told, books, whether self-published of not, sell an average of less than 300 copies. (Here is a great article filled with all kinds of sobering realities.)

I decided that I would not self-publish again. I wrote a second book about leaving fundamentalism. I thought it would be an excellent topic, since so many are struggling with that situation. Really, it was some of my best writing. I sent it to a real publisher. They were interested. But they wanted major revisions. Lots of rewriting.

I was not up to it, but it was a great book. So, I sucked it up, and contacted a self-publishing press. I even bought the deluxe marking package. I hired a marketing firm. They got it lots of reviews. There were also lots of totally independent reviews.

The reviews were great, the sales were not. It’s still on some back water page on Amazon. I might have made 300 bucks. I spent 2.5K.

Lesson 2: You must be willing to work with editors and rewrite if you want a book published by a reputable publisher.

On my next foray, I swore, NO SELF PUBLISHING! I wrote a very simple, down to earth book on mysticism and meditation. I submitted it to a medium sized press and. lo and behold, was signed! Of course, with lots and lots of revisions and editing. It was gratifying. Very small book (100ish pages). It got great reviews. It even won a book award.

Very nice. But the fundamentalism book had won an award as well. Of course, publishing didn’t cost me anything with this one (except hours and hours of time). The results, however, were not so different. Just got my last royalty check. Less than 100 bucks.

One of the reviewers (well published) told me that writing books was never going to make most folks rich. He said that I might make enough to buy us a six pack of beer.

Lesson 3: Most books don’t make money.

There is another web review that talks about authors making thousands on books. It also talks about making a hundred and losing money. John Grisham no doubt rakes it in. James does not. I have a friend, who is a much, much better writer than I. She has had even worse “luck.”

So how can you enhance your chances of writing a book that succeeds? Summer Land offered some good starting places:

· Hire a good editor.

· Build a fan base — perhaps by using social media (such as Medium).

· Perhaps start with an e-book that you can give away for free.

· Try to freelance (It often pays, too).

· Find the right agent or publisher.

· Think about the best way to pitch your book to publishers.

· Ultimately, you must sell yourself.

Yep! It takes a lot of work to publish a book.

Really, no one knows what will happen until you try. Things have changed in publishing. My publisher required that I submit a marketing plan. It is not like, “You build it, and they will come.”

Publishers expect you to do most of the marketing of the book you write. Only about 1% of books published make it as a commercially viable success. Self-publishers like Lulu seem to score less that 50 sales per title. Publishers are quite cost conscious.

But there is always that 5–10% who really make it as authors. You will never know if you might be among them unless you try.

Lesson 4: As my wife said, James, you wrote those books because you had to. There was something within that you felt needed saying. If only to yourself.

I think she is right.