5 Mistakes to Avoid If You Want to Be a Successful Author

Over and over again, I find the same mistakes prevent aspiring authors from achieving their goals of becoming successful—even bestselling—published authors. You can avoid them, however, once you know what they are.

The 5 Mistakes that Stop You From Succeeding as an Author

1. You don’t develop marketable book ideas. To become a successful author, you have to create book ideas that sell. Marketable ideas target your ideal readers’ needs and desires and provide something different from published works in the category in which you book will be sold. If you don’t create—and produce—a unique and necessary book that targets your market, you won’t find many readers. Without more than the average number over readers, you can’t create a bestseller or become a successful author.
2. You don’t write your book. This seems pretty obvious. Once you have a marketable book idea, you have to write the book if you want to become a successful author. That means you have to start and finish writing the manuscript. If you don’t do that you remain a writer and an aspiring author—not a published author. Of course, the book you produce must be marketable as well to become a bestselling author. That means it must be based upon a marketable idea (see #1) and you must carry out that idea as you compose you manuscript.
3. You have no way to help sell your book. If you write a marketable book, you increase the likelihood of producing a bestselling book. But if you promote that book once it is published (and I’m assuming you don’t make the mistake of not getting it published), the chances of producing a successful book—and becoming a successful author—increase tremendously. The ability to help sell your book relies on two things: your author platform and your book promotion plan. If you haven’t developed a foundation of potential readers in your target market, your promotional efforts will fall flat. You won’t have anyone to whom to market. That means that once you have a platform in place, you have to know how you plan to  promote to your potential readers, or book buyers. You need a promotion plan that contains numerous action items. For you and your book to succeed, you have to make the effort and take the time for pre-release and post-release promotion.
4. You consider yourself a one-book author and only a writer. Successful authors don’t earn a living from the sales of just one book. Their income includes sales from numerous related books, courses, teleseminars and webinars, coaching and consulting, and speaking—or a combination of one or more of these activities. If you aren’t thinking about how to build a business around your book by spinning one book into many books, products or services., you are missing a huge opportunity for creating a career as a successful author.
5. You are unwilling to get education or support when you need it. Sometimes it’s okay to go it alone; other times it’s better to ask for help. If you want to speed up your transformation from aspiring author to successful published author, know when you need a teacher, a coach, a tool, a skill, or an accountability buddy. Successful people in all areas of business and art know they need experts to help them advance toward their goals. You are no different. Unwillingness can often sound a lot like excuses, which are just another way to avoid doing what’s necessary to fulfill your dream.

Do any of these mistakes sound familiar? No worries. Now you can avoid them in 2015. Do things differently, and change your results. Become a successful author—a bestselling author—in 2015.

If creating a career as a bestselling author, indeed, is your goal, be one of the first to receive information on my new Six Months to Your Bestselling Author Career premier coaching program. Make sure you are one of the first to hear the details by filling out the form below! I’ll be releasing information about it very soon! In the meantime, watch my new new educational video series on how to create your career as a bestselling author. The first video explains how to write a bestselling book.