How to be an author of 3 self-published books

I’m proud to announce that I have self-published three books, a task I originally thought was impossible back in 2014, where I made my first attempt and failed miserably. I soon found strength two years later to start writing and by belief, accountability and discipline I committed to completing a working manuscript. A lot of people ask me, “Mike, I don’t understand how you have the time to write these books, how do you do it?” This article aims to explain very briefly how I am able to do such a thing. I have previously written an article how the exact steps I took which you can find here.

In summary, it starts with having a strong working idea of the process and staying on track by keeping yourself accountable by other people. This can easily be done in a mastermind group or accountability sessions, both ideas I used and took extremely seriously. And finally, it’s having a serious conversation with yourself that aggressively makes a decision to commit to the cause, and not stopping until a real result is developed.

Know the Process

Before I set out to write my self-published books back in 2015, I attended a class that my accountability buddy at the time invited me too. I guess I was lucky because the speaker was boasting that the price of the ticket was £97, but on this occasion, he was allowing people to bring one extra person for free. As an opportunist, I thought this was a great opportunity to learn how to do this book writing think properly.

The man who taught us was Gerry Roberts, a book publishing and marketing guru. He went through all the steps, and strategies, and allowed us to do some exercises to prepare us to get into the mindset of writing a book. Of course, he was trying to sell an expensive programme in the thousands at the end, but I was not prepared to make any sort of commitment (I’d already fallen for such offers in the past and have suffered for it!). But there was one slide that motivated me immensely which showed a guy who did everything himself that Gerry taught. Gerry Roberts looked at us and said “You can do this by your self, it’s just a lot of work…” which to me says “Do it yourself.” I’m not afraid of hard work….

I set out to watch multiple videos on YouTube about self-publishing, just so that I can understand the process. Then I gathered all my ideas onto a checklist app of what I thought the process was and followed it from start to finish.

Get Accountability

As stated before I had an accountability buddy who also wanted to write a book. At the time I would argue she was a couple of steps ahead of me which was extremely motivating. However, I soon surpassed her in knowledge and action because I was HUNGRY! We both wanted it, I just took actions that matter, which was writing. The great thing about these sessions is that we would meet every 1-2 weeks throughout the year and talk about our progress, wins and challenges, and anything else we thought necessary. Having someone there who you can share ideas with consistently is so important. As human beings, we can’t do everything ourselves. Although I am classed as a self-published author, I needed support from friends and family. In addition to this, I began a monthly mastermind group of individuals who all had very different businesses. We shared many ideas and learned from each other. This was another great way to stay motivated. If you want to achieve a specific goal, involve other people, it’s the quickest way to do it.

Another way I sought accountability was to record myself throughout the process. I had never done this before as it felt weird to do, but I’m happy I had done it. The videos are a constant reminder of how my mood fluctuated throughout the many months of writing. But it is clear to say that I carried on moving in one direction. No matter my motivation went up or down, forward was always forward. You can see a copy of my short book journey video here (warning I look terrible!).

Don’t stop writing

The secret to success in this bit it to not stop writing. You need to be obsessively aggressive with your goal and constantly thinking, “If I don’t write anything my book won’t be finished.” I had told a lot of people I was writing a book, and you could tell that some people had total faith in me, and others couldn’t care less. Regardless, there were people who knew and I didn’t want to disgrace myself. Furthermore, I really wanted to achieve a milestone and call myself an author. As a developing personal brand, it’s very difficult to be classed as some sort of expert if you don’t have some backing to support your ideas. A book is a great way to do that. It’s a personal brands ultimate business card so to speak, and I encourage many to write one.

I was writing my book everywhere, on the train, on the bus, at home and at work. I started off having a schedule by writing in the mornings before work, and then writing in the evenings after work, but that soon changed. My laptop died on me two months in, so for at least 5 months, I was writing my books on my Samsung Galaxy S6 smartphone on Google Docs. I got repetitive strain injury from doing this as I effectively wrote a 900-pages of A3 (I later broke up these pages into smaller books). At the time, I never decided how big my book should be, I just kept on writing and stuck to my original plan.

I also made sure I knew what my goals were each day. I did this by calculating how many words I write per day on average, and how many sub-topics I needed to produce based on the structure and plan I was following. In my mind, all I was doing was answering many different questions to many different topics highlighted in the book, in a logical fashion. I didn’t check my work until I finished writing everything; I just didn’t stop writing. It was clear to me that if I had something, it could be cleaned up later. I have pretty much stuck to this strategy for other things too, specifically when designing online courses, online sales funnels and coaching programmes; it always works out over time.

To conclude

The process is easy, the discipline to stick to writing is difficult. The trick here is to build in mechanisms that drive you to write every single day. If you can do this, then you’ll be on your way to writing your first self-published book. Again if you want the exact process, you can find my article here. If you interested in checking out the books I have written feel free to check them out here. If you do end up reading any of the books, and you like what you’ve read, a review would be very much appreciated!

#BelieveAndSucceed