Having helped several thousand writers become published authors, I know firsthand how publishing one’s own book can affect a world of change.
1. Your book can improve your view of yourself.
- Anytime you add to your skill set and life experiences, you’re fine tuning the image you see and respect in the mirror. Accomplishments, successes, and failures affect how you see yourself. They can help you adjust or adapt your behaviors to present and future opportunities with renewed vigor and enthusiasm.
- Publishing a book can give your confidence and ego a healthy boost. Any writer who publishes their book has something to be proud of, no matter its level of success. The greater its quality, the greater its opportunities for success and to affect change.
- Investing in yourself helps you feel worthy of success and praise. Committing appropriate investments of talent, time, and money to your publishing project ensures that you have the greatest chance of reaching your goals and earning the success you deserve. Intentional planning for success and promoting your book gives you more opportunities to affect change.
2. Your book can improve how others see you.
- Publishing a professional book remains one of our culture’s greatest achievements. Friends, family, and business colleagues will admire and respect you for accomplishing this monumental feat.
- As growing numbers of readers and customer segments learn how relatively easy it is for anyone to assign an ISBN to any piece of writing and call it “published”, a professional-quality book helps customers view you as an accomplished expert or storyteller.
- A tangible book of sound editorial integrity acknowledges your commitment to quality for your readers, translating to even greater confidence in you.
3. Your book can improve your life.
- Your book can make you a more desirable candidate or prospect. A professionally published book on your résumé adds gilded gold to your pedigree and can raise your value in the eyes of others—particularly employers.
- Accomplishing the monumental task of publishing a high quality book raises the bar and creates new opportunities for success and personal growth.
- Sales of your published works can add funds to your coffers. It’s hard to plan for it, but it’s also difficult not to be motivated by the financial possibilities.
4. Your book can improve the lives of others.
- Any book can change the world. While you’d expect a book about smarter real estate investing to benefit its readers with great knowledge and insight, novels, poetry, children’s books, and memoirs have just as much opportunity to inspire and affect their audiences.
- Novels and memoirs are transporters, introducing readers to faces and places that they’ve never encountered before. The experiences of and dialogue from any character can inspire, entertain, comfort, and empower audiences in personal and real ways.
- Your book’s information can improve your audience’s understanding of a complex theory, concept, or social situation. This elevates their knowledge and expertise in the subject matter. Education is a common motivator for indie authors—and readers.
5. Your book can have far reaching effects that you can’t foresee or anticipate.
- Your book can raise awareness, start conversations, and cause others to consider another point of view on the simplest topic or complex issue. An effective thought or explanation may provide the tipping point that causes a person or group to take action. Published books can affect public opinion and perception, whole political movements, and elections.
- One never knows how a book might affect someone desperately needing words of comfort, encouragement, or a different point of view.
- A book may inspire a reader to take a chance, make a leap of faith, or better plan their next steps. Any book about any subject may have hidden nuggets or wisps of dialogue that resonate in very personal ways with an individual or group.
It’s natural to fear your published book could be like a tree that falls in an uninhabited forest. Believe that it can also herald new ideas and opportunities for your readers. As each reader brings their own points of view and world view, you never know how even a few words from your book might result in the smallest of tremors or the greatest of quakes to your audience.
If you have something to say—and something to publish—it’s never been easier to indie-publish a superior book product. The world is waiting to change. What will you do?
Write. Publish. Be Red.
