The competition for a first time writer is suffocating. But I believe there is a way to stand out the crowd.
The most common mistake a first time writers do is writing without exposure.
Derek Sivers was blogging 15 years before publishing his first book. Chris Brogan was blogging every day for 5 years before writing the first book…
A first time writers who don’t publish their articles are not writers but dreamers.
EXPOSURE RULES
If you are a first time writer you need a real exposure ASAP. Starting a blog is a good idea only if you have a tribe. What to do if you don’t have one?
Take your best 10 articles and publish them in a groups. If your articles on self help so it’s a self help groups.
The same article could be a hit at one group and a loser at another one.
Anyway… Some of your articles would not manage to get even 1 “like”. Don’t ask your friends to like your articles. Play this game fair. So if you don’t have likes – think hard how to rewrite it. After rewriting – publish again.
At the end of this game you should have 10 articles that managed to get at least a couple of likes. And those are the 10 articles that you can use as a blocks of your future book.
All mastermind groups and workshops are great as an addition to this game…
There are a lot of people for years going from one great workshop to another fabulous one and still staying in the middle of nowhere…
real exposure rules
everything else is a bull:)
DON’T KEEP YOUR MOUTH SHUT
If you will publish your newly written articles someone could steal your ideas. That’s true. There’s a risk like this.
Let’s talk about another risks.
If you have no exposure you cannot learn fast. Your competitor (who works on the same topic) is publishing one article a day. It’s 300 articles a year. She is learning her audience. She is building a tribe. In one year she is gonna be so far – you just can forget to catch up with her… forever….
Let’s talk about another risks.
Assume the same idea you are trying to hide from people came to some guy’s head in India or Mozambique. It could happen. This guy would make a post about it ASAP on a FB group. There’s a date and comments and witnesses. Now – how you prove that the idea came into your head first?
Albert Einstein’s formula for success in life is work, play and keep your mouth shut.
The funny thing is Einstein made all his great discoveries by yapping all the time… He never did follow this formula by himself in his the most productive years…
PARANOIA MONGERS
There’s a people who profits on the paranoia that someone could steal your ideas. It’s a ghost writers and editors. Why? Because you will definitely fail if you will publish a book without the exposure game…
And now you are in a huge need to use an editor or a ghost writer – because writing a successful book without exposure or without a help of professionals is impossible.
That’s why never listen to editors or ghost writers advise on how to be careful about stealing your ideas and all the copyright stuff. Because they profit from the paranoia mongering.
LISTEN INTENTLY YOUR AUDIENCE
“Attention is a constant caress…”
– Serena Taccari
Sometimes when you publish your articles – there are gonna be some unrelated to the article comments. Is it a good idea – just to ignore them?
I don’t think so. Ignoring is wrong.
What kind of a writer you are if you have no time to listen? Especially if it’s your audience…
Why do you write? To help people? How you can help people if you have no time to listen to them?
Do you know what Sigmund Freud was famous for? He was incredible listener… He could just sit on the edge of a chair and listen for hours with such an attention… that you cannot even imagine…
So if it’s your audience and if they have some problems – listen… Because their problems are now your problems… And if you would find a way how to solve the problems – people would love you more, and would trust you more and would recommend your books to others.
So don’t ignore unrelated comments. Listen to them. Because every comment like this – is a great opportunity to stand out the crowd.
They’re no examples of a great authors who managed to make their first book to be a masterpiece. All the first books of a great authors were a crap… unless they started the game with actively publishing articles.
Publish, build a tribe, listen to your audience and think hard how to help people instead of dreaming how to become rich and famous.
take care 🙂
Details:
Thanks a ton to Serena Taccari for ideas… Especially the one was used in the title of the article.
hiker 
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