4 Shameless Reasons To Consider Becoming A Book Author
If you need encouragement to get that book idea out of your head and onto the page, then read on
Fame, money, and cheap dinner party gifts — the glorious life of a book author. Photo by John-Mark Smith from Pexels
As the cliché goes, everybody has a book in them. But clearly, most end their time on this planet before getting one out (sorry to get all morbid this early on).
If you’ve always dreamed of becoming a book author but need an extra prod of encouragement to actually get going, here are some unashamedly snobby reasons why you should take the plunge (alone … or with the help of a ghostwriter).
Books Have A Relatively High Bar For Entry
As anybody who has clicked onto the URL has surely observed Twitter is, in large part, a cesspool (of hate, misery, ire, and woe).
Why is it thus, you ask?
Because it takes precisely three minutes to sign up for a Twitter account and — once you’ve done that — you have a lifetime pass to spew rants onto the internet(until Twitter bans you. Then you have to pull a Donald Trump and start your own social network).
You can reach for the app wherever you keep your smartphone. Which for most people is in their trouser pocket or by their bedside.
The book market isn’t exactly bereft of bad — sometimes even appalling — literature (as book publishing has become progressively easier over the years, the avalanche of low quality published work has risen commensurately).
But it’s still — even now — a good deal harder to get a terrible book onto the market than it is to issue another appalling tweet into cyberspace. And as the formula goes, the harder something is to do, the more elite those who successfully pass the bar can consider themselves. If Redditors and Twitter users are the food soldiers of the online flame war, then book authors are the Navy SEALs.
Reading non-fiction books is also a high ROI intellectual activity that puts readers — and authors — above the reach of the Twitterati (you can now call them The Digital Proletariat) constrained to a 280 character limit by their Big Tech Overlords. They can thus get away with being far snobbier and more transparently self-pretentious. Warren Buffet is said to read for six hours a day, ya know.
Become a book author. Join the Global Elite.
Book Authorship Confers Lifetime Bragging Rights
Once you’ve got a book or two to your name, you can bore friends and dinner party guests for the rest of time about that book you put out in [insert decade].
The fact that it sold 10 copies, your literary agent subsequently dumped you, and even your family members couldn’t finish it needn’t matter one bit. No-one needs to know those sordid details including your ghostwriter. Bottom line you wrote a book. Once.
Better yet, assuming your book appears in print, you may find that you now have lifetime access to heavily discounted copies of your own book–these are usually called author’s copies and are one of the best gigs in the writing business.
Order them by the crate, store them in the attic (displace your family possessions if you have to), and — again — thrust them on your dwindling network of friends or whoever else will listen to you talking about your book.
If it sells, you’ll also get to see your book in airport duty free shops (take selfies with the copies and post those to Twitter). And you may even catch someone reading it one day in the wild. Take photos of those encounters too and also post them to Twitter.
More importantly, your one-time act of book authorship will provide you with a lifetime supply of gifts for (more) dinner parties, social events, etc.
You get to give cheap gifts while shamelessly self-promoting yourself indefinitely and if your book is even vaguely educational you can use the idea of benevolently educating your friends and family as a convenient subterfuge to get your name up on other people’s bookshelves as free advertising (just be sure to visit their houses periodically to assess product positioning and discreetly adjust it if required).
How cool is that?
Book Authorship Helps You Become Famous
A reputable book ghostwriter’s inbox is permanently filled with missives from retired businessmen, B-list Hollywood celebrities, self-aggrandizing megalomaniacs who may also have conveniently selective memories, and individuals of dubious repute, with blurry pasts, clutching at their last hope of fame for all its worth. I promise I’m not describing mine.
Those hoping to go down The Book Route are planning on rolling out a time-worn-but-still-operable formula that goes something like this:
- Write book
- Hire aggressive publicist, preferably also somebody somewhat desperate, to promo the book
- Talk about book to any podcast / TV / radio host with a pulse while hooking prospective readers on vague promises that it will somehow change their life
- Wait for royalties to come flooding in
- Go back to enjoying retirement but as a slightly More Prosperous Person.
Even if this process turns out to be a total flop, you’ll likely wind up at least somewhat more notorious than you were when you began this process. And prosperous. Maybe.
Fame, royalties, and almost free dinner party gifts. This inglorious trifecta can become yours if you just get that book out.
Book Royalties Are Basically An Age-Old Passive Income Scheme
Passive income has become all the rage these days.
But in their thirst to buy up property in tax havens and get in on the dropshipping/Bitcoin-mining/affiliate marketing crazes, people tend to forget that earning book royalties is like passive income for old school folk who didn’t get brainwashed by internet culture and who don’t listen to podcasts or YouTube.
Contrary to what some prospective first-time authors imagine, book ghostwriters don’t take royalties (at least reputable ones). But publishers do (or more accurately revenue). Even if you’re self-publishing.
But once that’s been taken care of you, the author, are left with some pocket change — I mean money. The better news is that that flow can continue indefinitely.
Better yet — pseudonymous publishing is still a thing. That means that you can legally use a fake name and get paid for the books you sell. Your mysterious neighbor who speaks of being “self employed” and always seems to be on vacation may, in fact, be enjoying a thriving career as an erotica author. You probably don’t want to know his pen name.
Books can be your ticket to fame, fortune, and longwinded self-promotional monologues at dinner parties about that book you once wrote.
Write one. Or hire a jaded internet cynic to do the dirty work.