Writing and Self-Publishing 

One of the best ways to make money while you sleep is to write a book with great staying power and continue to collect royalties for many, many years.

Interestingly, 81 percent of Americans think they should write a book, but only 2 percent have completed a manuscript. Alas, the large majority of people are not prepared to pay their dues.

This is one of the reasons that American novelist John Updike said, “Writers may be disreputable, incorrigible, early to decay or late to bloom, but they dare to go it alone.” If you want to join the small minority of creative individuals that has completed a manuscript, you should force yourself to write for at least an hour or two each day. You must, in fact, go it alone. This be difficult and uncomfortable for a long time but eventually you will have the book completed.

Most people don’t start or finish their books because of a lack of commitment. How about you?

Why Write a Book? The best way to establish yourself as the expert in your field is to author a book. It's more effective than advertisements, CD's, websites, articles, or blogs.

Once you establish yourself as the savvy expert in your field, you can make a great residual income for life, provided that you bring out new editions of your book and utilize the content from your book to create other money making products and services such as seminars, speeches, and CDs. 

It is important that you find a subject that sells, test your book's marketability, and ensure that it stands out from the crowd. I brought out How to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free in 2004. This book has now sold over 125,000 copies worldwide and still sells over 12,000 copies a year despite the fact that there are many new retirement books published each year and most are lucky to sell more than 1,000 copies in their lifetime. I keep selling more and more Foreign Rights as well.

So why not write a book? Perhaps, like many people, you have always wanted to be a writer. Deep down, there has always been something about the Starbucks cappuccino-and-laptop crowd that appealed to you.

If you have thought intuitively for a long time that you should have been a writer, you should give it some serious consideration. Indeed, if deep down you have always wanted to write a book, not writing one can be more difficult than actually writing it.

Assume that you are placed in a prison cell against your will and your jailers tell you that you have to write a publishable book in order for you to gain your freedom. You are given access to the Internet as well as a writing coach and any book on writing and publishing that has ever been written.

Do you think that you could write a decent book? Clearly, many people - likely you included - under these conditions would knock off a book within two or three months that is better than thousands of books that have been published by major publishers.

I know that we are ignorant and lack artistic talent but is this any reason to give up on our self-help book? That crackpot Ernie Zelinski has written several.
- Cartoon caption in How to Retire Happy, Wild, & Free

Writing, plain and simple, is putting your knowledge and ideas into words on paper and then trying to arrange them in publishable form, whether it’s for a book, newspaper, magazine, or a website. Above all, writing is one of the best ways to express yourself to the world, and make some money at it at the same time.

Sit down at your computer and write 500 to 1,000 words today. To date my international best-selling The Joy of Not Working has made me about seven dollars per word since it was first published.

If you can put together a book that goes on to be just as successful, writing 500 words (about one page) today will end up making you $3,500 over the next several years.

Whenever I have a choice whether to watch TV or head down to a coffee bar and write a new book on my laptop, the coffee bar and laptop win out every time. To the best of my knowledge, few success-seekers have become finders while watching TV.

Boldness matters!

All quests worth undertaking - starting Apple Computers or writing a blockbuster book - require boldness.

And action. And willpower. (Of course.) And persistence. (To be sure.)

You have to have sheer courage to challenge conventional wisdom and go against conventional wisdom. You must also suffer the failures and critizism associated therewith - and persist until success.

Again, Be Different. Look at the truly successful in this world such as Richard Branson. Not a one of them is close to normal. Not even close to being normal and fitting in with the rest of the crowd (how boring that is).

In short, if you can't be different - and really different - forget about creating a blockbuster book. 

• Quotes about Writing and Publishing
  
  Quotes about Writing and Publishing to Inspire You to Write Your Next Book. Some of these are quotes about writing are by famous writers and some are by not--so-famous authors.
• How I Sold the Foreign Rights to a Book within 4 Hours
  
  How I Sold the Foreign Rights to a Book within 4 Hours of Accidentally Sending It to a Literary Agency.
• Writers and Entrepreneurs Do Not Know What Having It Bad Really Means
  
  Writers and Entrepreneurs Do Not Know What Having It Bad Really Means: Whether you are an entrepreneur, writer, or working in another occupation, you may think that you are having a bad day or even a bad year. Indeed, all of us may be struggling with our projects at times but it is important to put things in proper perspective.
• Not Writing a Book May Be Harder than Actually Writing One
  
  Not Writing a Book May Be Harder than Actually Writing One: Write Yourself out of Poverty into Satisfaction and Riches

Top-10 Inspirational Writing Quotes to Motivate You

to Write a Book and Become a Successful Author

If you want to be a writer - stop talking about it and sit down and write!
- Jackie Collings

The three great essentials to achieving anything worthwhile are; first, hard work, second, stick-to-it-iveness, and third, common sense.
- Thomas Edison

Why do writers write? Because it isn't there.
- Thomas Berger

I'd rather be a failure at something I enjoy than a success at something I hate.
- George Burns

You don't write because you want to say something: You write because you've got something to say.
- F. Scott Fitzgerald

I'd rather live precariously in my own office than comfortably in somebody else's.
- Peter Mayle

Syzygy, inexorable, pancreatic, phantasmagoria - anyone who can use those four words in one sentence will never have to do manual labor.
- W. P. Kinsella

If you wait for inspiration to write; you’re not a writer, you’re a waiter.
- Dan Poynter

I feel very rich when I have time to write and very poor when I get a regular paycheck and no time at my real work.
- Natalie Goldberg

A professional writer is an amateur who didn't quit.
- Richard Bach  

   

COPYRIGHT © 2010 by Ernie J. Zelinski 
 Author of the World's Best Retirement Book
A Great Business Promotional Giveaway
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