The Direct Path to Becoming a Successful Author

A ton of information exists everywhere…online and off…about how to become a successful author. However, if you follow all that advice, you’ll find yourself going this way and that rather than taking a direct route to publishing success.

Even worse, the overabundance of advice can leave you unsure of which path is the best. (After all, every expert has a different opinion.) That means you might end up going around in circles, taking a wrong turn that costs you time and money or sitting at an intersection trying to decide which way to go.

Don’t panic!

A proven route exists—one that will get you to successful authorship. It includes much of the information you’ve gathered from the numerous experts and sources but is a simple map.

In fact, if you take all the advice, sort it, and break it down, you end up with seven necessary steps that take you from where you are to where you want to go—Successful Authorship. Move from one to the next, and you’ll travel a direct path to publishing success.

When you know the seven steps, it’s easy to track your progress as well. And that’s your challenge this month.

March Nonfiction Writer’s Challenge

To complete this month’s nonfiction writer’s challenge, track your progress on the journey to successful authorship by determining how many of the following seven steps you’ve taken or still need to take.

This challenge has three parts.

Part 1. Acquaint yourself with what’s involved in each step toward becoming a successful authors.

To complete this part of the challenge, read through the seven steps below.

1. Idea—Develop a book idea. Determine’s is content and structure.

This is the fun step! The lightbulb turns on, and you get an idea for a book! You brainstorm content for this book and organize it, thus creating a table of contents.

2. Platform—Start Building a platform, which is a built-in readership for your book in your target market.

For most aspiring authors, this is the not-so-fun step. It involves speaking, blogging, social media, and more—all to make you visible to your book’s potential audience. These fans and followers will later purchase your book.

3. Business Plan—Create a business plan (book proposal) to evaluate your book idea and make it more marketable.

In The Author Training Manual, I explain how to produce a more marketable book idea—one with a higher likelihood of selling—by using a nonfiction book proposal to improve your approach to an idea. No matter how you plan to publish, evaluating your market and competition, for instance, helps you decide how to make your book unique in the marketplace.

This “proposal process” also helps you evaluate your ability to sell books because it requires that you determine your platform’s size and the strength of your marketing/promotion plan. It also asks you to analyze the size of your market, so you know if there are enough potential buyers to make the book profitable.

4. Personal Growth—Evaluate yourself to determine what mindsets or habits you must adopt to become a successful author.

Many aspiring authors struggle to write consistently, aren’t willing to build a platform or promote their books, or get distracted from what they really need to do to succeed.

If you can relate…you stand in your own way of success.

To remove this obstacle, invest in personal development. (If possible, enroll in a personal development program for writers specifically.) This one action will help you develop supportive mindsets and habits—those necessary to succeed.

5. Write—Write the book and get the manuscript professionally edited.

This step can be fun, inspiring, exciting…or difficult, overwhelming, and discouraging. The experience you have is dependent upon the amount of personal development work you have completed and how aligned you are with your book topic.

If you feel passionate about your subject and believe it will help you make a difference in the world, you are more likely to write consistently and complete your manuscript. A high-performance approach to your writing helps you be productive.

Once the manuscript is complete, it’s time to hire a professional book editor or editors. Then, with a good bit of objectivity, make the changes the editors suggest.

6. Publish—Self-publish or traditionally publish your book.

This sounds like a simple step, but it isn’t necessarily. Lots of mini-steps are embedded in this one, like finding a literary agent, creating a formal book proposal and query letter, formatting your manuscript for ebook and print book, and getting a cover designed.

However, this is the final step that makes you an author.

7. Market—market and promote your book to potential readers.

To become a successful author, you need to sell a lot of copies—at least if being a bestseller, making money, or having your book read is important to you. That means you need to get out there and tell people it exists.

This step involves carrying out your marketing and promotion plan.

Part 2. Use the following chart to track what steps are complete or incomplete.

Part 3. Create a plan to complete any incomplete steps.

Of course, you can look for more information on how to take each one of these steps, and that will help you move faster toward becoming a successful author. But stick to the seven steps. Only gain additional informaiton directly related to completing a step. If you do, you’ll arrive at Successful Authorship.

In a comment below, let me know how much progress you need to make or have made on the path to becoming a successful author. And please share this post with any writer who would benefit from reading it.