The doors are wide open for those who want to write and get published. Such is the marvel that the advent of self-publishing has gifted aspiring authors.
Despite this freedom, some pundits believe that one cannot simply write on a whim especially if one is not an expert of what one is writing about.
Independently published author Brooke Warner, an expert on traditional publishing and new publishing, as well as an advocate of traditional and self-publishing, believes that “authority” and “author” go hand in hand.
That “authority” and “author” share the same root is a given in publishing circles. To become an author you should have authority in your subject, and those with authority often write books. The trajectory of authorship goes like this: You work to become an expert in a particular topic. You author articles and books. The more you publish, the more you embody the very definition of authority: “the confident quality of someone who knows a lot about something.”
Books may be about “nothing”
Brooke believes that memoirists and self-help writers can make something out of nothing. They are considered an authority in that they narrate their life story, warts and all, and share insights based on their own experiences.
You can write novels and memoirs from a kind of authority that doesn’t require accumulating years of study or apprenticeship. You can gain your authority to publish from lived experience. People even write self-help books from that place of authority.
Establish authority as a writer
Elizabeth Gilbert, the famed author of the bestselling Eat, Pray, Love explained why it took her 12 years to have the confidence to publish her new self-help book Big Magic.
I think that I honestly didn’t feel that I quite had the authority yet. I needed to feel like I had a few more books under my belt, that I could really stand on my record. You know, if I was going to throw myself out there and say, I’m going to tell you how to do this thing, then I had to know that I was smoking what I was selling, basically.
Cultivate your “big idea”
You may have a eureka moment, a “big idea” that you can put to paper, but it may be in vain if you overlook how to use that brilliant story inspiration to your advantage.
Many authors simply don’t have the patience to wait to cultivate their own expertise. An aspiring author may have three or four ideas and feel compelled to write the BIG IDEA rather than the IDEA TO PUT THEM ON THE MAP because they don’t fully grasp the value of planting seeds, tending to an author platform that could (and frankly will) take years and years to grow.
Write on
Brooke reminds aspiring authors who wish to make it big to keep writing.
Author experts are not made overnight, and getting published writing under your belt (including books, of course) is the key to true authority (and by extension success). No matter what your genre, your author trajectory is the same: Publish a lot of content wherever you can. Your first book should serve no other motive than to put you on the map.
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