I may be a little late to the party, but I just saw a reference to a quote that “81% of Americans feel they have a book in them.”  That’s easy to believe; if I had a dime for every time I mentioned I was a writer and heard, “I could write a book about MY life!” or some variation, I’d be quite wealthy indeed.

So You Want to Write a Book

Some people take that common dream of writing a book a step further: they actually sit down and write it. Granted, that percentage is very small, but we’re still talking lots and lots of people here. And I’ve got to say “congratulations” to them. I know what it takes to write a book. For the majority of people, it doesn’t come easy. They will struggle over creating a beginning, a middle and an end. They will seek the right words to convey their meaning and strive to make the story flow. And when they finally type the phrase “the end”, they might have their spouse or a bookworm friend or a family member who creates corporate newsletters look it over. “Tell me the truth,” they’ll ask. “Is it good?” Nine times out of 10, the beta reader will respond with a little white lie, “Sure. It’s a great story.”

Now what? No professional proofreading or editing needed; it’s so easy to put a book on Amazon that many of these fledgling authors do just that. And that is a shame.

Self-Publishing Gone Bad: Linda’s Story

I recently received a call from someone I’d helped in the past. I’ll call her Linda. Linda had written a book on substance abuse. It was her own story about enabling a spouse and suffering through abuse until she finally found God. All Linda wanted me to do was turn her manuscript into the proper format to upload it to the Kindle Direct Publishing site, even though she didn’t have an Internet connection at the time and her computer was a decade old.

After reading through the manuscript, which had apparently been edited by a small, local publishing house, I identified lots of issues. For one, the manuscript was badly written and poorly edited. For two, the story just wasn’t very compelling. It didn’t offer anything that hasn’t already been written a thousand-fold times before by actual doctors or famous people. For three, Linda had no way of marketing the eBook, let alone getting it uploaded with appropriate keywords, cover art, blurb, reviews, etc.

Trying to help Linda, I told her all these things. But it didn’t matter to her. She’d written this book and she was adamant about getting it online. Nope, she didn’t want my editing services, nor my proofreading services, nor any type of advice. Just put it in Kindle format, she begged me.

I ended up doing the work for free because Linda had just lost her job. It didn’t take me long since it’s a relatively easy process to make a document ready for upload to the KDP site. That was that. I deleted the manuscript from my computer and moved forward to help others who really wanted my help.

That was several years ago. Fast forward to this week. Linda called again. She’d gotten together with another “author” who had approached me with a self-written book in the past. The two of them wanted to put their books on Amazon and needed some help with, well, everything. “Did you start an Amazon account?” I asked. “No, we can’t figure out how to do that.”

Inside I groaned. I tried my best to be polite and kind but I couldn’t help bringing up the fact that if they couldn’t even figure out how to start an Amazon account, the odds of them successfully uploading their books were slim to none. I didn’t say so at the time, but what I wanted to tell Linda was, “Just because you write a book and upload it to the Kindle store doesn’t mean anyone will ever read it.” Nor should they. I’d read both of their books. Yes, there were glimmers of a good story in both, but the writing wasn’t good, the proofreading was horrendous and they needed an edit that would amount to a complete and total rewrite. Then there’s the job of marketing the books. Amazon sells millions of books online. The chances of a mediocre book with no online marketing efforts written by an average Joe selling even a single copy are astronomical.

So, should you write the book that’s inside you? Sure. I don’t want to discourage anyone. But the reality is that making money off a book takes tremendous time and effort. Even if your goal isn’t to get rich, but merely to tell your story, you need help to do it the right way. If you feel compelled to write it yourself, go ahead. But please don’t upload it to Amazon without a professional line and copy editing and some advice from someone who’s been there, done that. Please.