Secrets You Need to Know Before You Write and Sell Your Book

If there's one question that I consistently get from friends and online acquaintances, it is one for advice on writing a book. It seems that everyone wants to write a book. People write books for different reasons. I think I was born wanting to write a book, I majored in English Literature for that reason. For other reasons, I ended up in marketing, but the need to write a book - to help people - never went away. The most common reasons I hear from people are:

• Establish themselves as an expert in their field (does that really work?)
• Get more speaking engagements
• Satisfy a heartfelt need
• Fulfill their ego to be a "published" author

Writing and selling my books is my main job (along with constantly researching my topics), it comes before everything else, even social media and speaking. I have been writing books since 1998 and sold a million by 2007. I don't count the numbers anymore, what counts to me is hearing from my readers. I am lucky to have been writing long enough to see the impact my books have made on my reader's lives.

Wanting to write a book and actually finishing the project are two vastly different things - just ask anyone who has written one. You also need to know, writing books are not for everyone. "Long form" content takes on a completely new meaning when you're expected to write not just 1,500 words - but over 300 pages on a topic.


Self proclamation doesn't make you an expert on any topic. You need to be researching the topic by studying others and "doing it" religiously. My eBay books, for example? I have been continually selling on eBay since January 1997. I don't have an enterprise level business, but I can testify to the frustrations of the small and middle business who sells online. I've researched every innuendo of an online business and have jumped through all the difficult hoops (including importing merchandise for my store).

Wishing something doesn't make it so. You can only convince so many people that you are expert on a topic; and you certainly won't succeed in your writing endeavors if you can't produce cogent and grammatically correct paragraphs. In the video below, I explain how you can write that book - without being an English major.

Author Bryan Kramer invited me to participate in his popular #H2HChat on Twitter. He came up with a topic that's close to my heart: “The Secrets Behind Writing and Selling Your Book”



Below is the video of the Google Hangout with Bryan and Suzi McCarthy. During the hangout, Bryan asked me some very salient questions that I bet you want the answers to. If after seeing this, you still want to write your book, congratulations!

If you have additional questions, or need some personal coaching on how to get your creative process going, visit my small business consulting link and we can strategically cook up a plan together.