Publishing Trends, which is quite the company name, consistently describes various trends in the publishing industry and recent deals going down all over the world. Pretty impressive and worth your while to check out. As an author, it’s important you are aware of what books or markets are hot right now and which aren’t. With industry trends constantly changing and then changing back, you must remain grounded in the one trend that never changes.
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Authors write. As an author, your purpose is to create content. You may have ulterior motives like making money or seeing your name on bookstore shelves but that is all auxiliary to the simple act of writing. You are a content generator. Your must take those abstract ideas and wrestle them into words. If you don’t, you’re not an author. If you don’t materialize what’s in your head, you’re a wanna be, a daydreamer.
Now, you know and I know you ARE an author. The problem isn’t whether or not you’re an author. The problem is what your pouring yourself into. What your spending your time on. What is consuming your focus and energy. Hours and hours and hours of prime writing time fly out the window while you’re searching for the right keywords on your site or researching that topic to see if it’s the right one. That’s unacceptable. Your number one priority is to create content. To create words. On the page or on the screen.
Think about it this way. Publishers publish books. The single drive within you must be laser focused on creating a book. Not a bunch of ramblings. Not a life of research. You must be working on and towards a BOOK.
Imagine this. Tomorrow, industry trends change and westerns become the BIG THING all over again. What are you going to do? You like to write about bunny rabbits and how to make big salads. But you’re all spun up on this new/old trend that westerns are all that sell RIGHT NOW and if you don’t jump on that ship you may as well quit.
Let me tell you a super secret truth that will carry you through the remainder of your publishing journey. If westerns becomes the next BIG THING (again) tomorrow, the person who LOVES westerns and has been writing westerns for the last decade hoping and waiting for westerns to find their way back to mainstream sales is going to be selling books. Notice I said selling BOOKS. Because they’ve been writing books this whole time. They’ve been editing their books and refining their books. They’ve been taking selfies on horseback and have all sorts of hats and boots ready for their western book tour.
The book publishing industry is not like some digital product e-commerce startup company that literally will try to sell anything that does sell and only cares about how many people are looking for the item. Book publishing takes a considerable amount of time to consider, cultivate, and create a product ready for consumption. (4 C’s).
What are you passionate about? What drives you? If you’re an author, and I know you are, you must be throwing down words on paper or on screen a mile a minute about that topic. All of the fluffy stuff that so easily distracts you from burning ink holds such little significance in your ultimate success. Write about what is important or fun or fascinating or neat or cool to YOU.
Now, let’s say you’re doing just that. You just read all the previous text and you’re like “Man, I’m doing that, I’m laser focused on the single thing that makes or breaks the bank, I’m creating my content, putting words down, burning ink, creating a book, but I don’t know if it will go anywhere or be successful when I’m finished.”
If creating the content of your book is a tree, it’s vital you give the tree the nourishment it requires. That nourishment, once taken up by the tree, is what ultimately pushes out the branches, blooms, and fruit 10 fold, 100 fold, or 1,000 fold.
The nourishment is the constant realization that delighting the reader is paramount. Everything you do with your content is to delight the ultimate reader. Pour over that. Think about that. The more delightful your book is to your reader, the bigger your tree will be. Delighted readers are multipliers. The delighted reader can share your book with 5 people in person or 5,000 people through social media platforms. The shafted reader will pay you back with silence – the gift of never telling a single soul about you or your book.
Every now and then I come across truly wonderful picture books. What do I do? I blog about it. I share it on Twitter. I can’t help it. I want to because the author (and illustrator) delighted me. Delighting a reader is the author’s framework that surrounds the goal of creating a book.
Creating the content within the context of delighting the reader has never changed, is not changing, and will never change. People often think the industry drives the market but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Readers drive the market. The more delighted they are in a genre or with an author, the more the reader will do what they can to advance it. To get more of it. To share it and spread it.
Focus on a single thing…creating your book. Do it within the framework of delighting the reader. If you do this, you’ll be successful beyond your wildest imagination.
Are you struggling with the focus part? Easily distracted? Not to sure what to do next in your publishing journey? I’d love to help you. Send me a note on my contact page. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain.
