There are 60,000 books published in this country every year. How many of those are worth a reader’s time? Michael Lewis, author of Liar’s Poker and Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, is a noted former bond salesman and economist. After the success of his article on Billy Beane’s underfunded Oakland A’s team Lewis decided to expand it into a complete investigative work. When questioned why he decided to write a book on the world of baseball recruiting and statistical analysis Lewis said, “ There are enough books in the world. You want to write the ones that are good.

The minute you write books because you need the income not because you think you have a good subject you should just stop. You are making someone make a serious commitment, not the money but the time, to sit down with a book and enter this world. You want it to be good. You want the book to be special and they are not always going to be special but at least you want that to be the ambition.”

Many budding authors think that they will write the book of the century and have agents and publishing companies breaking down their door to sign them on. Nothing could be further from the truth. Traditional publishing is a long painful road which often ends at the dead end of disappointment and frustration. Securing an agent who will represent your interest and your book is difficult at best. Most authors do not walk in off the street and get picked up by an agent. Getting an agent today is similar to getting in the right sorority or fraternity in college. It is not what you know but who you know. Having an agent or a publisher in the family does not hurt either!

Even securing a great agent who is hungry for success does not guarantee success in getting your book published the traditional way. The sun, stars, and moon must be in perfect alignment and you must have written about something that publishers are interested in publishing in that particular moment in time. If you can guess what that is or what they want or when the planetary alignment for publishing is you better patent your discovery and sell it instead of the book. There are over 600,000 other authors out there with manuscripts floating around in competition with you.

Many the writer has paid the publishing coach to help them get their techno-thriller polished and ready for the publishing world. The perception is that the successful writer is a wealthy person who stays at home in their mahogany finished den penning their next great work for their adoring fans. Nothing could be further from the truth! Traditional publishing is now the “Best-Seller or Die” forum for books.  Even in the world of non-fiction, it is all about the speed with which the books will leap off the shelf without a dime of publicity invested in the work. Traditional publishing editors are essentially the gatekeepers to what the public is allowed to read.

Consider the fact that Stephen King’s Carrie was sent around and around and turned down by every agent and publisher upon whose desk it landed. He eventually tossed it in the rubbish bin and his wife rescued it for one more try. It was considered by all the mainstream publishers to be too gory and too edgy for the more sensible reading audience. It is a good bet that the first few publishers who had a chance at King’s multi-edition best seller of a Prom Night Gone Horribly Wrong are kicking themselves even all these years later.

Self-publishing or vanity presses have been around for over a hundred years.  Subsidy publishers have gotten a bum rap in many circles. There are works produced that probably are not worth the paper they are printed on but there are also some real gems that come through the process. Mark Twain, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry David Thoreau, Mark Victor Hansen, and a multitude of other notable authors all used entrepreneurial publishing.  In some cases they had no other choice but in other instances they wanted to maintain control over their work and their profits.

Those who select to publish the traditional route maintain little to no creative control over the content of their own work that they spent hundreds of hours producing.  They then are paid pennies on the dollar for every book sold.  Additionally, there is little or no contact allowed between the author and the publisher without benefit of the intermediary agent who is also getting a 10-20% cut of every royalty check sent to the author.  Add to that the fact that when your book is discounted by the book seller the writer often earns no royalties at all. It seems to me that the contract terms in publishing are too similar to those of a serf in 18th Century Russia.

Compare that to entrepreneurial publishing where the author assumes all the risk and maintains total control over the book content and its royalties. If the content is good and contains pertinent information that the target audience needs, wants, or is begging for and money is available to invest in the project why would an entrepreneurial author ever want to send out a query letter?

If you have a passion for a subject and you have something useful to say to your particular audience there is no reason not to “get it down on paper”. Everyone can write and everyone has a story to tell.  What do Earnest Hemingway, Truman Capote, William Faulkner, Jacqueline Susan, Oprah, and Jay Leno all have in common? They all had good editors who helped them turn their passion into print.

In the movie Get Shorty Dutch Leonard says:

“You asking me do I know how to write down words on a piece of paper? That’s what you do, man, you put down one word after the other as it comes in your head. It isn’t like having to learn how to play the piano, like you have to learn notes. You already learned in school how to write didn’t you? I hope so. You have the idea and you put down what you want to say. Then you get somebody to add commas and shit where they belong, if you aren’t positive yourself. Maybe fix up the spelling where you have some tricky words.

There people that do that for you. Some, I’ve even seen scripts where I know words weren’t spelled right and there were hardly any commas in it. So I don’t think it’s too important. “

A book is the way to differentiate you from the gazillion other professionals out there making a living. There are many subjects that warrant a deeper examination. Your book may never be found in a chain store and it may not be targeted at the cultural radar screen; however, if that is not your target niche what does it matter? If your goal is to not get caught up in the invisible marketing chain or Barnes and Noble and Amazon but to have a tool for catapulting you to the pinnacle of your professional career, entrepreneurial publishing is for you. There is a book for all occasions and an occasion for every book!

Entrepreneurs are used to taking a risk. They know there is no time to waste money or energy on a fruitless endeavor. Write what you know about and enjoy the discovery process that goes with the effort. Your work is the primary industry that creates wealth. So why not take action to hold on to more of the wealth?  Write for your niche audience who elects to put faith in you as a writer to provide them with something interesting, useful, worth their while and perhaps even entertaining!

“Overnight success takes at least ten years.” Michael Swanwick

If you have information, experience and knowledge that will benefit others then you are an expert who really should create a book that sets you apart from your competition. Not only will a book give you professional credibility, it gives you an edge because of the increased recognition it earns in the public eye. New clients are more likely to buy from someone who has written the book on it. You suddenly become the authority because you have proved in print that you know your business through and through. As an established expert in a business people will pay more for consulting fees with an author.

A book complements your business. It is not a supplement for generating additional income. It will generate cash but not in number of books sold. Instead it is an inexpensive lead generating tool that gets your foot in the door, gives you credibility, and sets you apart from the competition.