It depends on the scope of your project, the amount of time you can devote to it, and how quickly you can pull all the components together. Some people write books in a year or two. Others take a decade. I wrote my first book in four months. It was one of the most difficult things I've ever done. I worked 16-hour days to keep my business running while I worked full-time on writing Tapping Your Inner Entrepreneur: Making the Move from Employee to Business Owner. But it was well worth the sacrifice. Whether you're on a fast track like I was, or working at a normal pace, you still follow the same basic steps for writing a nonfiction book. Let me walk you through:
1) Consider your audience. Who will read this book? What will those readers want to see on its pages? With me, this part was easy. The book was one of a series of three being published by the National Association of Women Business Owners and OPEN/American Express. The audience was women, or even men, who were thinking about starting their own businesses but weren't sure how to make the leap. The association put out a request for proposal, or RFP, and I bid on the job. My bid won out of about 40 nationwide. Read more... |