What is your 'why'?

Redefining writing success

My daily work involves helping people achieve their writing and publishing dreams. Whether I’m collaborating with someone to help them turn their ideas into a book or guiding an author’s manuscript from rough draft to published book, I get to do the very satisfying work of helping people do what they always hoped they could do.

I always ask the writers who embark on this adventure with me: what is your why? Why do you want to write a book? Why do you want to write at all? What are you hoping it will give you? Why are you the right person to write this message and share it with the world? And how will you measure success?

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For some, the why is easy: they’ve just always wanted to write a book. It’s a bucket list thing, like climbing a mountain or running a marathon.

Like those aspirations, writing a book takes time, commitment, and effort. A lot of people, once they embark on such goals, discover that it turns out they don’t want to climb a mountain, run a marathon, or write a book. But rather, they want to be someone who has climbed a mountain, or has run a marathon, or has written a book. They want the product without the process. The achievement without the sweat. They would prefer to skip the months or years of training, preparing, learning. Of writing, revising, editing, and revising again.

Photo by Flo Maderebner: https://www.pexels.com/

Still, those who persevere are typically those who are very clear about their why. And here’s the surprising thing: they typically aren’t writing to try to sell a lot of books. Oh, sure, that might be nice. But selling a lot of anything including books takes a lot of time, effort and money to pour into marketing that thing. And most writers don’t necessarily want to do that.

But there are other ways to measure writing success besides book sales. For example, I’ve helped several businesspeople (and pastors) write and publish books. See some of my collaborative projects here.) Their why is not “to make the New York Times Bestseller list” and it’s a good thing it’s not. Because the NYT list does not even include self-published titles, no matter how many copies they sell.

But a business leader, or ministry leader, often writes a book to establish themselves as an authority on a topic, or to share their wisdom about that topic with a niche audience. Or to simply get a message out. Their why is about growth. Success, for them, looks like growing their business, getting more speaking gigs, or consulting projects. For some, it’s about expanding the reach of their ministry or non-profit organization.

Authors only make a few dollars per book they sell, typically. But one or two speaking engagements, or being hired by one new client, will make these authors more money than their book sales probably bring in. More importantly, it will establish them as an authority on a topic, or tell the story of how they built a business or organization. When they define success as growing their organization or their speaking career, they don’t worry about book sales. In fact, some authors self-publish and give away copies of their books, as a calling card of sorts, to help them build their business, or open the door to opportunities.

Their “why” is not book sales, but growth—of their business, ministry or organization.

What is your why?

Maybe you don’t know yet. You just know you want to write, because you’ve got something to share with the world: insights, stories, advice, whatever.

Consider that your why might be bigger than just your book. Perhaps writing your book will open doors for opportunities to speak, to mentor, to minister, to lead. (My books did that for me.)

When you know your why, you have a way to more clearly define success, an opportunity to measure your progress, and motivation to keep moving forward when the journey gets hard.

Leave a comment: if you want to write a book, tell us why!

P.S. If you’d like help writing and publishing your book, contact me here.