Have you cherished a dream in your heart that one day you will see your name as an author of a best-selling book?
You aren’t alone, many young blood like you are dreaming this but can’t understand what to do and where to start.
Good news!
Table of Contents
How To Become a Professional Book Author?
As a professional writer, I have invested thousands of hours researching how to generate money through your pen. Here I just share three parts to make you master: how to become a professional book author. You must follow these steps if you want to earn a full-time income as an author.
Authors who do these things correctly become financially free…
While authors who neglect these priorities end up frustrated and disappointed.
In this content, you’ll discover:
The step-by-step process that guarantees you to complete your first book as an author.
And much more…
So reading no more other words, let’s dive into the first part of becoming an author.
Part — 1 Preparatory activities
I hope you have heard the words; a good plan is half done of the job. That’s why you have to take some preparation before sitting to write.
1. Determine a fixed place to write
From the beginning of your career as an author, you must select a specific place to write. If you can choose the right place for your writing, then it will be easier to write words because when you sit there, your back of the mind will recall you now it’s time for writing.
On the other hand, if there is no particular place for your writing, you will procrastinate to sit for writing. In this way, you waste your valuable time and move away from your dream.
2. Make a comfortable and noise-free environment.
A real writer can write everywhere, but you can’t write a single word in a noisy place as a beginner writer. Even if your chair table is not as comfortable, that will distract your mind from generating some sweet words to appeal to your readers. Moreover, you spend more time thinking about your comfort instead of writing the plot and characters. Is it hard to become a writer?
3. Accumulate your writing equipment
If you think a digital pen and paper set is enough to complete your book, then you are not on the right track of your writing career. You need many tools to assist you while thinking or writing something interesting. You have to keep your side the below-listed tools to short cut your frequent movement to collect them. The listed tools are
- ● A middle-sized ruler,
- ● Stapler,
- ● Paper,
- ● Pen,
- ● Pencil,
- ● Pen and pencil holder,
- ● Pencil sharpener,
- ● Paperweight,
- ● Note pads,
- ● Clock,
- ● Beverage mugs,
- ● Water,
- ● Tissue,
- ● Napkin, etc.
4. Select a genre of book writing
The most important thing of the preparatory part is to choose the genres of writing. As you want to become a book author, you have known some writing genres like
(fiction, non-fiction, novel, prose, poetry, short story, etc.)
At the first step, you can’t roam all the sections of writing. Even, I think you don’t like all of them when you are a reader. What types of writing you like the most, and have the confidence to write, choose that particular genre to write.
Part -2 Starting to write a book
Now, you are ready to write the first words of your first book. Now, read the following steps and grab them.
1. Break a big writing project into small pieces
A book is having more than hundreds of pages, even sometimes thousands. Of course, for your first book a hundred pages are enough. But as a novice writer, you feel this hundred pages like a colossal task. When you break these hundred pages into twenty slots, it seems smaller than the first looking hundred pages.
It’s like eating an elephant into frequent but continuous small bites. When you think of your book from this elephant eating perspective, then the writing task will look easier, simpler, and more productive than a single sitting writing.
2. Choose a big idea to describe
If you want to write a best-selling book, you must include a reader’s killer idea into it.
You should choose one of your great ideas to write in your book, which impulses you to wake up the next morning, stay a long time with your keyboard to write more and more words. Even when you share your ideas with the people of your surroundings, they will get excited to know the rest of the concept.
When you see famous books like Harry Potter, Paradise Lost, How to Win Friends and Influence People, you can understand how to complete a book with rising readers’ tension and interest.
At first, please don’t go for a big concept but don’t make it too small that nobody considers it as a book rather than an article. Even if you can’t complete writing the book, that will be an article, blog post, or content but not an entire book.
The exact and right idea naturally works, and you will know the importance of it when you complete your first book. If you can give the readers’ the feelings that the story is valid, they will be involved with your words; they will cry, laugh, be tense, happy, jealous with your pen.
3. Establish your story outline
A solid outline is the blueprint of your story. When you set an outline for writing, you can visualize your book.
I like to compare this outline or format establishing process with a long drive highway journey. While you are a highway car driver, you know where to stop to take a rest, drink, and eat. After that again, you start your journey from where you stop. In the same way, you have to know where to stop to change the writing plots. If you write page after page without any break, that will make your book monotonous, boring, and dull.
No matter what you write, fiction or non-fiction. Create some characters with one or two main characters because the story will move forward with them. If you don’t have enough confidence about your outline, story, and charterers, don’t hold your pen to write. If you do that, you will stop writing in the middle of the marathon. Here’s a simple view of outlining your book
- ● Opening with an inciting incident
- ● Marathon race (middle of the book) – Crisis
- ● Climax and
- ● Conclusion
4. Make an exact writing schedule
Initially, you have to make an exact schedule to sit to write your book. The time depends on your writing habit. Some people like to write in the early morning if he/she is an early bird. On the contrary, some people want to write in the middle of the night if he/she is a night owl.
Even as per your wish, you can make some different sessions for writing. It’s not a big issue, the big issue is sitting for writing, and of course, it must be regular.
If you want to get a suggestion from me, I will tell you to sit for writing, at the same place, and on the same days of the week to make a solid writing habit. Though I am not a book author, I think my suggestion will work because of my content writing profession (a little bit similar to book writing). By following this, you can carve your writing skills to see real progress.
For this, you may have to sacrifice some of your favorite TV shows, a newly released movie, concert, Netflix, party, some hours of sleep at night. But don’t neglect to sleep at least 6-7 hours per night because proper rest is essential to think better words for your book.
When you build your own habit, you will go to the right path on your way to complete your book.
5. Set up a deadline
Most of the time, if you don’t set up any specific and tight deadline for your work, you will fall into the game of laziness and procrastination. So fix a deadline and strictly try to meet it up except in an emergency. This will motivate you to write some extra words to get the deadline meeting pleasure.
I can tell you some tips on setting up a deadline and what you consider meeting the deadline. Firstly, set up a short deadline, then meet it up. In this way, increase your deadline and writing word count. You can treat it as an experiment of writing a book. Never set a deadline which you can’t meet. Your deadline must be realistic, meetable, and doable. After that, lock it and keep your deadline scare.
You can tell your fixed deadline to your bosom friend, spouse, or any other beloved person. So you feel accountable to them for your work. That’s why you will be crazy enough to meet the deadline.
6. Remove distractions
Do you easily get distracted with many tempting things like social media and its notifications and can’t focus on your work? Do you write one sentence, then check your mail, messenger, or Facebook? Then write another sentence and talk for 10 minutes over the phone. If it’s your writing style, then right now, eliminate all the things beside you while sitting to write.
If it’s continuously happening to you, then you will lose your writing track and write some cheap words that don’t make any sense.
You can use some apps to block all kinds of notifications from your email, social media, games app, internet browser, etc. As a result, you can concentrate 100% on your writing book.
7. Research, research, and research
If you write any non-fiction book, then you must gather information, data, and other resources to prove your writing authenticity.
Another side, fiction doesn’t mean just you’re writing a story. It’s more than a simple story. If you can’t adopt the right approach to telling your idea, then nobody will read it because there’s high competition in the market.
You have to create some characters in the fictional story to stick the readers with your words like a magnet. You have to make your story realistic by blending logic and historical information to make it believable to the readers.
So for all of these reasons, doing research is mandatory to become an author. You can’t say I have done my research until you publish your book. Sometimes you may have to conduct your research in the middle of your writing.
The more you research to write a book, the better you can write, and the more your readers believe your words.
8. Think your reader first, middle, last and always
When you express your idea based on the reader’s side, everybody will benefit from the book.
When you start writing, always think of your reader first. Don’t bother about your editor, agent, publisher, advertiser, critic, none. Just think from the reader’s perspective. You write for readers, not for the middle man who is related to book publishing.
Think readers first for what to write, how to establish the story’s outline, how to describe the story, and what things are included in the book.
So, naturally, before writing, take a clear idea about your readers. You have to know:
- ● What is the average age of your readers?
- ● What are the general interests of them?
- ● What do they love?
- ● What do they hate?
- ● What is their attention span etc.?
When you get puzzled, stand before the mirror and ask what you write and what you want to read as a reader. You will get the answer and can please yourself and your readers with your words.
9. Start writing with an appealing intro
A great and engaging intro can hook your readers like superglue; similarly, an awkward intro fails to grab the readers’ attention. If you are getting stuck to write a perfect introduction for your book, remember you are not alone who face this problem. Every writer will face this problem and overcome it.
Here, I am sharing four categories to write an excellent introduction that will bind your readers to turn over every page to read. If you can compose an exact first sentence, it will boost your confidence, momentum, and soar to write further words.
Category 1 — Surprising sentence
Write a surprising sentence, because everybody loves to give surprise to their beloved one and get a surprise from them. So when you craft a surprising line, it rapidly touches the human emotion, because 90% of the time, human beings go with their feeling, and the rest 10% is for reality. A surprising sentence can be
“You! When do you come? You told me that you will come tomorrow.”
After this conversation, hopefully you want to read more sentences about this conversation. And by this way you can take your readers to the next pages of your book.
Category 2 — Dramatic Statement
The dramatic statement really works outstanding as the first line of a book to engage readers with it. This is why some drama is staged several times. A dramatic statement can be
“It’s been more than ten years since I was in prison, and nobody came to see me here. I don’t know who my parents are and when they kept me here.”
I know you feel curiosity to know the next line of the voice, even I don’t tell you about the age of this voice, gender, why he/she is in prison, and nothing. So you must turn over the page to know about the voice.
Category 3 — Philosophical words
Sometimes a reader likes to read highly philosophical words instead of real words. Highly philosophical words can be
“It is challenging to balance a 50-50 ratio between reality and emotion in your life. When you speak with emotion, you will be bloodied by the hard blows of reality, and when you talk with reality, you will be ridiculed as cruel, and ruthless.
Those who are more emotional are bloody in the face of reality, and those who are more realistic are bloody in emotion. You have to be bloody, whether you are emotional or realistic.”
Most probably those words awake your inner mind to think about life, emotion, reality, etc. I must say if you can write in this way your readers feel interest in these words.
Category 4 — Poetic
Poetry is another category to write a super useful intro to win your readers’ hearts. A poetic intro can be
“The sky is clear and some blue clouds are flying like kites. If I can fly, I will go where my father is hiding himself and playing hide-and-seek with me.”
This is an easy and short example of poetic intro. Hopefully, you can write better than this.
10. Raise conflict and tension in the middle of the story
What is your favorite movie? Have you ever consciously noticed why that is your favorite movie? If you don’t think about it, I suggest you identify what makes the film one of your favorite movies. Wait, before your observation, I want to share what my sixth sense says: why that movie grabs your attention, why not others?
The most probable reasons are a solid story, an excellent storytelling style, the conflict between hero and heroine that raise the mercury of tension, and you are eagerly waiting for the movie’s ending.
Can I exactly tell why that is your favorite movie? (Please tell me to the comment box)
Yes, you have to craft these skills in your writing to hold your readers to the end of it. Tension and conflict are the secret sauce to walk your reader a long way.
11. Compose a stirring ending
It’s the last secret to be an author of a successful book. Notice the famous writers, and they never write a smooth and happy ending of their books. They left the conclusion of the story to the readers. So after finishing reading the book, they will think about it and imagine an end of the book as per their wish.
Part 3 — Editing and publishing your book
It is the final stage of your dream coming true. When you have completed the above two steps of writing your first book, that means you are very near to your writing seashore. Let’s have a look at the book’s polishing and publishing part.
1. Edit your manuscript ferociously
Don’t think that I am telling you to become behaviorally as ferocious as the tiger or lion. When editing your book, I want to say; double-check the book’s informational authenticity, longevity, readability, story, characters’ justification by editing appropriately.
Since you write the book, that’s why you know better how to make the book look great. Sometimes agents, publishers, and sponsors read two to three pages of your book and consider its worthiness or not.
But, how do they decide your months or years of devotion by reading only those pages?
They have already read many books, invest in those books, and sometimes succeed and sometimes fail. So they have built a sense of book editing.
You have to ferociously edit your book and omit unnecessary words. Here are some tips to be a self-editor of your book
Omit unnecessary words
Always use simple and familiar words to describe your story. So the reader can understand its meaning without a dictionary.
- ● Don’t use redundancy words. For example, “She entered into the open door.” Look, as she entered, that means the door was open. You don’t have to write it.
- ● Try to avoid adverbial verbs. For example, it is almost gone, etc.
- ● Naturally, make your writing plot and characters. Don’t forcefully enter any plot or characters.
- ● Don’t bring too many characters into the one plot of your book. If you do that, the readers will become confused.
- ● Try to avoid a lot of adjectives.
Yes, after writing an entire book, it’s not easy to revise it for self-editing. But, if you can do this, it will make you a better writer than others.
2. Properly format your manuscript
After editing now, format your manuscript correctly to go to printing. Good formatting makes you an expert author; on the other side, poor formatting makes you an amateur. Before submitting your manuscript correctly format it, if you don’t want to let the writing boat sink near the ashore.
Some of the best practices while formatting your book.
- ● Always use a 12 size font.
- ● Use a nice font. You can use Times New Romans as it is a common font among the writers.
- ● Don’t use extra space between two paragraphs.
- ● Don’t use extra space between two lines. One space is enough.
- ● The text must be ragged left-right, don’t justify it.
- ● You have to use a line or (***) these signs before changing the writing plot, chapter, or passage of times. It makes your book good-looking.
- ● Properly margin your page. (One inch to the top, bottom, left, and right side)
- ● Use black color for font and white background.
- ● Use page number as a footer and chapter name as a header.
If you can successfully complete your manuscript, the editors and publishers will like it to read and publish.
3. Select a mentor
If you can get mentoring from an established author that’ll be great for you. It takes you there, where you want to go.
A mentor will tell you the pitfalls of an amateur writer; he/she will share his/her many years of the learning experience and how to curve your writing skills. How excellent the opportunity is!
But, finding a good mentor is very tough. If you can engage a great mentor, you will learn, and if you engage a mentor who failed in his/her career, you will lose.
So don’t make any mistakes while looking for a mentor. You find a lot of mentors online; you can choose one, who seems the best to you.
4. Select the types of book publication
You can publish your book in the following two ways. One is a traditional publishing company, and the other is self-publishing. Keep your eyes below to know about them.
Traditional publishing
There are a lot of companies who work as a punisher of the author’s books. For this, they pay all kinds of costs to publish your book. Some mentionable costs are editing, proofreading, typography, printing, warehousing, shipment, account keeping, etc.
When people purchase your book, they pay a royalty to you. That means when you publish your book with a publishing company, they will take all responsibility from top to bottom to publish your book.
Self-publishing
Now, as the internet is flourishing, that’s why you can handle anything with less cost than traditional things. So you can publish your book through self publishing. Here you are all in one, and you have to take all responsibilities.
For example, you are the writer, decision maker, financier, publisher, advertiser, warehouser, etc. You can select some people to do all of those things, you have the right to approve or reject the works, and lastly, you have to pay for those works.
Both publishing categories can be the right option under different circumstances and if you can execute them exactly.
Wrapping up
After consuming many things, do you think it’s a very long journey to be an author? Don’t be overwhelmed, panicked, or lose hope. Remember, all great works take time to establish but once grow it will flourish.
If you can’t capture all the steps, then take a deep breath, imagine your future as an author, and then reread how to become a professional book author. After that, take a note of which things are your strength and which are your weaknesses. Now, overcome your weaknesses and keep your first footprint at the door of becoming a professional book author.
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