Guest Post: 5 Reasons to Write Your Book Now

Guest Article By Drew Gerber, co-founder Wasabi Publicity and PitchRate

(Discover more great wisdom on Achieving Your Dreams during Answering The Call Virtual Summit, starting February 7th)

Why bother?

Why would I?

Why me?

Why not?

The perennial whys. Truth is, we have reasons for just about everything thing we do, from why we chose vanilla over chocolate to why we decide to run our first marathon. Depending on the choice in question, our reasons for various things have different “weights,” don’t they? You may not need a huge, emotionally-charged, majorly significant reason for choosing vanilla. But to run your first marathon? Personally, I’d need a big, fat, loud, massive reason to get through all those muscle-aching, lung-gasping hours of training! “Because it sounds good” just wouldn’t cut it.

Fortunately for you, the weight of your reason for writing your first book is somewhere between choosing vanilla and running a marathon. You need a little more than “because my colleague wrote one” and quite a bit less than “because the future of the human race depends on it” — though if the future of the human race does depend on your book, let me know and I’ll help you get it done!

Writing a book can be simple and is relatively easy compared to all you’ve done thus far to build your career. But it can get “hard” and there are definitely times during the process where we all need a strong reason to keep keeping on. So for me, the first step of any project is clearly analyzing and defining why the heck I’m doing it in the first place.

There are a zillion compelling reasons for writing a book: To tell a story that needs telling. To preserve a bit of cultural or personal history. To get all those crazy thoughts out of my head and on to the page! For many of us non-writers, the urge to write a book has something to do with our career or our passion – which, if we are fortunate, are one and the same!

So why would you, a non-writer who has probably never attempted writing a book before, write a book related to your career or your passion? Your reason will be unique to you, and you need to find a reason that is particularly compelling to you. But here are five possibilities to consider:

Credibility: Even in today’s world, where half of your neighbors are YouTube stars and the other half have enough friends on Facebook to populate a small country, being a published author is still rare and respected. Your book gives you particular credibility, an aura of authority that’s hard to create in other ways.  And having credibility helps you with your…

Public Relations: The media (TV, radio, magazines and newspaper) are always looking for new stories or for experts to fill out their stories with commentary and data. To create a good platform to promote your career or work, you definitely want to be one of the media’s go-to experts. And nothing screams “knowledgeable expert” to the media like the fact that you have written a book.

Teach a Topic: Think of the classroom: What’s the main resource teachers have? Books! Information from the internet is great. But to really study a topic, to learn something in depth, many of us still prefer a clearly-written, well-organized book that we can mark up, throw on the bookshelf, and refer to later.

Spread a Message: By authoring a book, we can increase our sphere of influence exponentially because our books end up in the hands of people that we would not otherwise meet or touch. And often a passionately-written book can inspire others to action, adding their support to the cause or objective we care deeply about.

Make Money: Every year, a few non-fiction titles become blockbusters and rake in millions of dollars. Could yours be one of those? Maybe. But even authors whose books don’t hit the New York Times best sellers list have found ways to generate income from their books. From eBooks to audio downloads, books can be sold in a number of formats to a wide variety of audiences through a myriad of venues.

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About the Author: For 30 years, Drew Gerber has been inspiring those who want to change the world. As the CEO of Wasabi Publicity, lauded by the likes of PR Week and Good Morning America, he sparks “ah-ha” conversations that lead to personal and business success. His PR firm is known for landing clients on Dr. Phil, Oprah, Anderson Cooper, The Wall Street Journal, Inc., Entrepreneur, and other top media outlets.

To discover how to write the book the media loves that skyrockets your credibility, join Drew and 11 other experts for Answering The Call Today Virtual Summit!