How To Write A Book - Part 1: How to get started?

Let me introduce myself. I am a first-time author whose first book (non-fiction) titled “Unmet Needs of Entrepreneurship - Why Entrepreneurs Do What They Do", published by Rupa Publications, was launched in Feb 2018. I wanted to share my experience in writing the book through a series of posts. Hope this will help other aspiring authors who wish to write and publish their thoughts.

To begin with, I am not a voracious reader and my limited reading experience is centred around non-fiction books. Also, I am not very active on social media. I am trying to change that now (kinda hard though!). In Dec 2015, I had the urge to share my thoughts on entrepreneurship that resulted in my first post on LinkedIn. After 3 days, I visited LinkedIn to check for responses. There were hardly 10 views. I forgot about it for some time and revisited the page after a week. To my surprise, I received more than 2000+ views, close to 50 shares and many comments from people I did not know. I did some R&D on what that meant and quickly realized that it was encouraging statistics for a first-time post! I received suggestions from close friends that I should explore writing a book! I soon realized writing a one page LinkedIn article was very different from writing a 60K+ words book.

I decided to take up the challenge. This is what I did –

• Think of a central theme for the proposed book
• Write down the table of contents covering various aspects around the theme
• Ask – Who is the audience? What value can I provide to my readers? Is there a unique narrative?
• Think of the writing style to be adopted
• Ask – How to present ideas to the reader?
• Start writing (using good old Microsoft Word)

As I began writing, I got stuck many times for lack of ideas around the central theme. Thankfully, I was able to find my way through whenever I encountered the writer’s block. Also, I had to keep in mind the potential requirements of a publisher. I assumed that at least a 60K+ words long manuscript would be ideal – not too long and not too short. Too long and the reader gets put off.

My book is meant for practicing entrepreneurs, aspiring entrepreneurs, professional business leaders, and MBA students. I decided that the book had to be simple to read. I followed the KISS principle – “Keep it Short and Simple.” It had to be a trade book – something that the reader could go through while traveling by train or waiting in the airport lounge.  Keeping the interests of a potential publisher and the customer at all times was very important.

There are multiple approaches to writing non-fiction :

1. Pen down your Autobiography (assuming people are waiting to hear your story).
2. Write about what others do or did (Rashmi Bansal type).
3. Pursue a unique insight you have about something and search for evidence to validate the insights (Malcolm Gladwell – Blink, Outliers).
4. Write a self-help book that provides gyan and experiences focused on personal growth (Dale Carnegie type – there are tons of them out there).
5. Develop models and frameworks that the reader can apply to his or her own circumstances (Clayton Christensen).
6. Write a book as a subject matter expert (textbooks, tech books, etc.).

I chose to follow route 5 as it provided me personal satisfaction. I wanted to focus on sharing some high level ideas and provide models that people could apply to their contexts. At the same time, I also realized my limitations. I was not an academic researcher and my sharing was based on my own observations and experiences based on my entrepreneurial journey of over two decades. I avoided taking route 3 as it would have involved extensive research that could have taken years (provided the insights I wished to share were exciting). Instead, I chose to have nine chapters that revolved around the core theme but provided different perspectives. I also decided to connect with the reader by linking real examples and situations to various models. I deliberately took the strategy of straddling and toggling between two domains - professional and personal to drive home some important points that applied to different contexts. The core ideas were not restricted in its application to the business domain only and also applied to one's personal life too. I also introduced many illustrations to add some humor by depicting real-life examples. Instead of digging very deep into each perspective, I provided nine different perspectives that could each be expanded into a book! If the reader could connect and derive value from even couple of ideas in the book, it would meet my personal objective as an author.

Many of the thoughts around the book were already there in my head and it took me 3-4 months to put it down in the form of a manuscript. By normal standards, this was super quick time and it can be attributed to the fact that I was in the flow zone. I spent 3-4 hours everyday on the book. Once the version 1.0 of the manuscript was ready, I was in a hurry to shoot it out to publishers. There was a problem though - I did not know anything or anyone from the publishing industry. I googled about the publishing process and realized that one had to submit manuscripts to a generic publisher emailid in a specific format. I was uncomfortable doing this as it really meant it was a black box with no human connect.

I did some more R&D and decided to go through a Literary agent. There are hardly any LAs of repute in India and I found four LAs who seemed to be veterans in the industry. I also read that LAs have their own slush pile of manuscripts. I received replies that I needed to wait for 12 weeks to hear from them! I thought that was crazy! 12 weeks to just let you know if they are interested in representing you!! I quickly realized that this was a new normal and that LAs and the traditional publishing industry work in multiples of weeks and months! I guess they have their own set of challenges.

Okay, so did the LA get back after 12 weeks? Were they excited enough to represent a first time author? You will get the answers in the next part of my series of posts on this subject.

Find out more about the book #UnmetNeedsOfEntrepreneurship 

Buy your copy here: https://bit.ly/Unmet_Needs

Also read:

Part 1:How to write a book - How to get started?

Part 2: How to write a book - How to draw the attention of a publisher?

Part 3: How to write a book - Self publishing vs Traditional publishing

Part 4: How to write a book - How much will it cost?