This article was written as the beginning of a book that I wanted to publish through Kindle. But now I have decided to post these articles on my blog. I hope you find it interesting.
I have two choices in deciding the structure of the book. The first choice puts emphasis on making money. It is not rocket science. Find out what is selling and create something similar to that. Find out what people want and sell it to them. These days with the Internet and social media it is not too difficult to find out what people are looking for. Simply surf the Facebook groups and forums related to your topic. Look at which books are bestsellers at Amazon. Go through the reviews and find out what people liked and did not like about the bestsellers. Then create a product accordingly. Fill the unmet need.
The other option is to write a book regarding what you already know and have experienced. I am 56 years old and have read a lot of books, seen many movies and have had many experiences. I can write about these experiences and what I have learned. It may or may not sell because I will not be doing any market research as described above. There is a rule in marketing that you don’t try to sell what people need. You sell them what they want. But in this second approach I will have related what people need. It is very unlikely that I will make pots of money but I may be able to influence one or two persons constructively. If I can do that then I will think that I am successful.
So I have decided to take the second approach. This is a book about me and the lessons I have learned. I make no promises that you will be able to transform your life by reading it. It is not a 7 steps to making a million dollars sort of book. But it is authentic. It is based on my experiences of life.
Tim Ferriss has told a story of a person who made a living as an author and had written over 70 novels. Tim asked the author how he was able to stay focused and inspired and write so consistently. The reply was, “two hundred crappy words per day, that’s it.” The idea was that if he forced himself to write two hundred words then the very act of writing would inspire and motivate him and over a period of time, he will be able to write a substantial amount. Many times, he would get inspired while writing and do thousands of words in a single day. And it worked. Seventy novels is huge and if I am able to make a living as an author I will be ecstatic.
Russell Brunson in his book, Expert Secrets, describes the process for becoming an expert who has something worthwhile to teach others. The first step is to read and research the topic. Russell says that most people who pose as experts come across a good idea and then try to regurgitate it as their own. But the true path to mastery and becoming an expert requires a lot more than that.
Researching a topic is only the beginning. And even that starts with your reading more than one book and thinking that it is enough. You need to read a number of books which explain all the different points of view that exist. Then create your opinion based on seeing all the different points of view. A philosophical concept that is relevant here is the Hindu story of the blind men and the elephant that I will explain below.
About the parable to the blind men and the elephant. Here is the story as sourced from Wikipedia:
The parable of the blind men and an elephant originated in the ancient Indian subcontinent, from where it has been widely diffused. It is a story of a group of blind men who have never come across an elephant before and who learn and conceptualize what the elephant is like by touching it. Each blind man feels a different part of the elephant’s body, but only one part, such as the side or the tusk. They then describe the elephant based on their limited experience and their descriptions of the elephant are different from each other. In some versions, they come to suspect that the other person is dishonest and they come to blows. The moral of the parable is that humans have a tendency to claim absolute truth based on their limited, subjective experience as they ignore other people’s limited, subjective experiences which may be equally true.
(Sourced from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_men_and_an_elephant#:~:text=The%20parable%20of%20the%20blind,is%20like%20by%20touching%20it.)
So I encourage you to look at many different points of view while contemplating a given topic. The parable above is one of the main reasons there is tolerance in India for all manner of religious faiths and beliefs.
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