What It Takes to Succeed as An Author
By DianeSeth Godin has a great blog post called, “Is Effort a Myth?” Read it and ponder this: “Am I willing to do what it takes to succeed as an author, or am I hoping for luck?”
There’s a reason some people get published and others don’t, and usually it has to do with the fact that published authors have put in the effort to gain expertise, build an audience, and actually write the book or get a good ghost writer to write it. They go through the work of putting together a good proposal, they don’t quit when they get rejected, or they self-publish intelligently.
My goal with this blog and my other resources is to give you the tools that can lead to your becoming a successful author. However, a hammer does no good in itself. Only in the hand of the carpenter does it hit the nail on the head.
Read Seth’s blog. To suggestion #2, I would amend, if you want to become a successful author, spend your 120 minutes:
- writing an article and posting it to article directories
- coming up with some free “Special Report” on your topic that you can give away to start relationships with people (ask them for their email addresses to get the report)
- setting up a blog and writing 2-3 times per week
- finding other people who are already talking about your topic (Ning groups, Yahoo groups, blogs) and enter the conversation by posting. Put your Special Report offer in your email signature line when you do post.
Everything else, listen to Seth!
2 Comments
October 8th, 2008 at 5:46 pm
I am an author and if I had to chose one of these to start with, it would be a blog. Your blog can become the hub of your other online activities, such as posting to article directories and doing social networking.
Blog posts are indexed by the major search engines and links to them stay in cyberspace forever (or as long your blog is hosted somewhere).
A blog is an effective and relatively simple means to develop a solid core group of influencers for current and future books.
Blogging takes time and you’ve gotta be committed and passionate, but it works.
Laura Christianson
co-founder, HeBlogsSheBlogs.com
October 9th, 2008 at 3:28 pm
[...] Godin has a wonderful post called Is effort a myth?. (Thanks to Your Book Publishing Coach for the [...]