One of the very best ways to establish your authority in a given field is to write a book about it.
After all, when we want to acknowledge someone as a bonafide expert, one of the figures of speech we use is: “they wrote the book” on that subject. Meaning: they know all there is to know about it.
But writing a book seems like a lot of work.
It doesn’t have to be. If you really know your topic well, you could probably complete your first draft in a week. Here’s a simple plan for doing just that:
“Prep Day” – Day ZERO: Come up with your title. Something like “The Insider’s Secrets of Raising Chinchillas” (or whatever your topic is). Then write an outline of what you want to say about your topic: 7 main subjects (chapters) with 3 points about each chapter. Sample:
“The Insider’s Secrets of Raising Chinchillas”
Chapter 1: Why Raising Chinchillas Is A Great Business
1. The facts about the Chinchilla business
2. What other Chinchilla ranchers have to say about it
3. My personal Chinchilla story
…and so on, for 7 “Chapters”. Then, you keep going…
Day 1: Record yourself just talking through your outline of Chapters 1 & 2.
Day 2: Record yourself just talking through Chapters 3 & 4.
Day 3: Record yourself just talking through Chapters 5&6.
Day 4: Record yourself just talking through Chapter 7 … and a short talk on “About this book” that will serve as the book’s “Introduction” (It’s best to do this after you have finished dictation of the whole book. You'll have a better idea what to say.)
Day 5: Send off your audios for transcription. Use someone who will “clean up” all your stumbles and false starts, etc.
Day 6: Do nothing.
Day 7: Receive your transcriptions back. You now have a first draft of your book.
The average person, speaking at a normal pace, will dictate about 20 pages per hour. That’s 140 pages in 7 hours (1 hour per chapter). After editing, that will be about 120 pages – a good length for a non-fiction book.
Depending on the transcription service you use, they may take longer than two days to turn all this around. But your part is done on Day 4!
That’s it – you’ve written a book in less than a week.
You could even hire someone to polish your first draft into a final draft. That should take a good writer no more than a couple of weeks.
So in less than one month from today, you could have your own, original, 120-page book. That will make you the expert who “wrote the book” on your topic.
While it took me considerably longer than a week… I do believe in the value of publishing one’s own, real books. My new book, “Writing Riches” will be released in November: http://amzn.to/9Dj7GA (you can pre-order it now on Amazon).
Now get busy and write that book, willya?