Improve Your Approach Towards Writing By Boosting Your Self-Esteem

Your writing can suffer due to many reasons.

However, one of the biggest factors that contribute to your determination is your self-esteem.

Your self-esteem is the general feeling you have about yourself — your belief in your abilities, the kind of person you are and your exceptions from yourself in the future.

Apart from how it can affect everyone around you, your self-esteem has a huge influence on the way you approach writing.

Here are some ways in which you can improve your self-esteem and write better as a result:

Know yourself: The path to improving your writing starts with getting to know yourself on a deeper level. Most of the well-adjusted people have a good sense of what they are. Knowing yourself is more than identifying your strengths and weaknesses. You will need to open yourself up to new opportunities, meet new people and try new things to find out what you are passionate about. You may even start a new hobby or a career path!

Exercise: Apart from getting to know yourself on a mental level, you will also need to find out your physical limits. People who exercise regularly are not only healthier, but they also have a much better idea of their physical capabilities. Your improved physical health means that you will have more energy to invest in writing.

Build relationships with different types of people: The people you meet regularly can influence your daily thoughts and moods. Being around people who constantly criticize you can damage what you think about yourself over time. Take the time and effort to associate yourself with people who stimulate your intellect and make you think about new ideas. It does not mean that you should cut everyone else out. Having good relationships with people from different career paths, religious beliefs, age groups and nationalities can help you come up with more creative ideas.

Reduce the effect of criticism: As you meet people and talk about what you do, you will come across some who never seem to be impressed with anything you do. You will have to find a way to reduce the effect of their criticisms on your mental health or become more assertive with them. Trying to make everyone happy with your writing will simply reduce the quality of your work and discourage you from penning your original ideas. Instead, take honest reviews from only a select group of people, who will point out flaws without harping on your mistakes.

Your self-esteem is a strong personality trait and it is not easy to make dramatic changes in a short amount of time. Regardless of what methods to use to improve your beliefs about yourself, bringing about a positive change takes time, patience and a lot of trial and error on your part. However, if you make an effort to be fair to yourself, you may be able to slowly improve not only the quality of your writing, but also the quality of your life.
How to Write a Self-help Book that Sells

Self-help books are the craze today and the number of new authors trying their hand at the genre is a proof of the fact. However, only a handful of them succeed in writing a book that people want to read. If you want your self-help book to be a commercial success, there are a few critical points that you should keep in mind.

Be yourself, be real

When someone picks up your self-help book, they want to get the feeling that you know what you are talking about. When you over-dramatize the situation/event or exaggerate the impact that it had on you, the book starts sounding more like fiction. That is exactly what you do NOT want. Be real, be realistic and be yourself to convince your reader that you have actually experienced the situation yourself. Your writing should convince them that you do have the personal experience to write a self-help book that can give some really useful inputs to them.

Be practical

Self-help books may address an issue that is not well defined or structured. They may even discuss a problem and offer a solution for an issue that is not widely accepted or even acknowledged. However, the book and its message cannot be vague or confused and most importantly, it cannot offer impractical solutions to the problem. The expectation of your readers is that they will find an answer to their problem from your book. If you fail to fulfill it, you will get some negative reviews that can cause immense damage to your book sales. Clear cut, unambiguous, completely practical solutions are a must for a best-selling self-help book.

Add value

When you compare two products that are similar, but only one of them offers a freebie, there is a huge chance that you will pick the value added one that gives you more for the same cost. The same goes for your self-help book, especially if the topic you are covering has already been written about extensively. Not only should you try to bring in an entirely new perspective to attract the audience, you can also ensure that your buyers get more value by adding a freebie that they will find useful. For example, a book about the benefits of yoga can come with a free CD showing your readers how to do various yoga poses and exercises. They will get to know why yoga is great for them and they can also progress to doing it, thanks to your CD. How To Promote Your Self-published Book

So, you have your very first self-published book all ready to unveil to the world? You even have a list of friends, acquaintances and relatives lined up to buy your first copies? That’s great, but what comes next when you have already sold your book to the first group of buyers? To canvass the marketplace in the most effective way and to ensure that your book sells, you need to invest attention in promotions too. Here are a few points you can use.

Everyone is not your audience

It’s true, not everyone is going to want to read your book and that’s not bad. In fact, there is probably no book in existence that has universal appeal. However, assuming that your book will appeal to everyone can be a big marketing mistake.

The first step in effectively promoting your book is to understand who your audience is. You have already worked on it when you started to write the book, i.e.: defining your audience. Now, you take this a step further and assess where the audience is likely to congregate so that you can focus your promotions in these areas. For example, if you have a book titled ‘Caring for your newborn’, you may want to promote it in forums where new parents tend to interact, or on communities managed by brands that sell products for newborns.

Offer your book free in exchange for reviews

Offering your book for free may seem to be rather counterproductive, but if you get some really good reviews in, the move can pay off in spades. Typically, you should limit the freebie offer to a few days right after launch and encourage the buyers to give reviews. Do not expect all of them to comply with your request, but some of them will surely oblige. If you know the top reviewers or subject matter experts in the niche that your book belongs to, offer them a free copy before launch and get their views on the book. Publish these along with your book listing to give it credibility in the marketplace.

Use social media to the fullest

Thanks to social media, sharing news with the world is easy and you can leverage the advantage to promote your self- published book to the world at large. Include blurbs from the book, pictures, reviews, excerpts to tantalize your social media followers to read the book. If there is any recent news that can be related to your book, refer to it and link it with your book and its contents. It is a great way to make the best of trending news in your promotional strategies. Four Tips for Every Newbie Self-Publisher

The journey to self-publishing can be an arduous one. You need more than just amazing writing skills and a burning passion to go the full mile without giving up. Self-discipline and self-monitoring are key to staying focused and meeting your authorship goals. These four tips will help you keep the momentum going less painfully.

Be patient

It’s not for nothing that patience is regarded as a virtue. There are quite a few logistics involved in both print and e-publication, and many first-time self-publishers tend to miss key steps when navigating the process. Look at it this way : in a publishing house, different individuals and departments handle different aspects of publication. When you’re on your own, you have to wear more than one hat, and go about the process patiently. Expect your patience to be tested even more when you’re balancing your personal and work (if you’re employed) commitments.

Be objective

If you’re a non-fiction writer, the ability to see your work through the lens of literary agents can come in handy. It can help you make objective decisions on content creation and marketing, by answering questions like ‘what kind of value does my book offer the target market?’ and ‘how unique and necessary is my book in its category?’.

Don’t skimp on the research

It is critical that, prior to publishing, you do your research and clearly understand all your options. Some of the not-so-glamorous aspects of self-publishing include obtaining an ISBN and barcode, figuring out the payment mechanisms and tax obligations, creating your copyright statement, and developing your website. As you’re readying to publish, you need to implement your web marketing plan. Even after you’ve published your book and started work on your next project, you must keep marketing your previous project.

Stay committed

Some writers can draft an 80,000 page book within a month while other may take up to a year to write the same number of words. If you can write only 400–500 words a day, and not write at all on some days, it’s fine. What’s more important is that you’re committed to the endeavor, because ultimately, writing a novel or creating a picture book is both time and effort intensive. Serious writers regard their work as a labor of love. Anyone who doesn’t want to take the pain to tell a story probably isn’t a serious writer. This quote by the great American writer Flannery O’Connor can help put things in perspective : ‘Writing a novel is a terrible experience, during which the hair often falls out and the teeth decay.’Four Strategies to Market Your Self-Published Book

One of the biggest challenges self-published authors face is effectively marketing their work. The problem isn’t so much with the marketing methods or channels; it is more about how well you can leverage them and promote the hell out of your book. Self-publishing has created a level-playing field no doubt, but the playground is fiercely competitive. If you want a fair chance at healthy sales, these marketing strategies can give you a good head-start.

1. Price your book competitively

The trend of initially selling their books for free for a few days has served indie authors well, garnering them visibility and helping them build a fan base. Low prices on long books also attract readers, which is another tactic employed by many writers. But the flipside is that readers may equate very low priced books with questionable quality and hesitate to buy them. Also, pricing your book too low can be a drag on your revenue, especially if you aren’t exactly selling many copies a year.

A not-too-high and not-too-low price is a good compromise for newbie authors. This price could be between $2.99 to $4.99 for a full-length book and $1.99 for a novella.

2. Get an author website

Your author website will be the one-stop destination for readers and the media to get more information and the latest news about you. Add a brief biography, high resolution photographs, links to your social media profiles, positive reviews and press quotes. Also consider a blog section where you can interact more intimately with your readers.

3. Get social

Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Google+ are some of the popular social networks where authors can engage with fans/followers. Guy Kawasaki recommends getting on social media before you start writing a book, as it will take you anywhere from nine months to a year to build a social following.

Create a great profile that elicits interest, and makes you appear likeable and trustworthy. Add your high resolution photo, but make sure it’s just you and not you with your spouse, pets or car. Write a few sentences about yourself and tell your personal story, staying honest to whatever image you want to portray and without going over-the-top about it.

Don’t just self-promote, focus on initiating engaging, lively and useful conversations with your readers. You can talk about your interests, opine on a news story or topical subject, and even post interesting photographs from time to time. Answer fans’/followers’ questions, give advice, and follow people whose content you find valuable and share-worthy.

People like sharing posts and tweets about contests. You can launch contests on social media and give away free copies of your book as gifts/prizes.

4. Create Google Alerts

When you create a Google Alert on your name, the search engine will notify you every time someone writes about you and your book(s) online. You can reach out to these entities to explore more promotional opportunities or thank them for the mentions.