Give your book sufficient thought

CHENNAI: The biggest mistake that new authors of non-fiction commit is that they tend to be too professional with their writing, says Dr Liz Alexander. When they write, they assume that unlike in fiction, they shouldn’t put a bit of themselves into their books. “It’s the basics of marketing. Why will someone buy your book? Because they know you, they like you and trust you,” says the author, journalist and training expert from Austin, Texas, who was recently in the city to conduct a daylong workshop on book authoring.  From the many new books she’s had to edit and review, she has one thing to say, “So many of them are crap.” New authors fail not because they are not smart, don’t have content or cannot string words together, but because they are not giving their book sufficient thought, Liz points out. “You have to ask yourself an important question – what is the core idea behind the book? What is the thing you want to know as an author, that your readers want to know as well?” The best advice Liz says she can give to such new, inexperienced authors is to not think of the end result – the book. “Think about the question and think from the perspective of the readers.” The transition from being a businessman or an entrepreneur to an author of non-fiction might be a bumpy ride, Liz says, which is why having a good editor is vital. “If you have enough money, you can even get a ghost writer to write your book. As long as you have the body of knowledge and the passion, you can do it,” she says. She re-emphasises the need for a good editor, “You can’t see your own typos, and you don’t know your own grammatical mistakes. You need another person to look at your work before it’s published,” she says, adding that she too has an editor.Most new authors also worry about someone else writing their book before they get to it. Liz promises, “Good writers are curious people, they have many good questions they want to answer. You have to learn to combine two different ideas and do unique research.” “What on earth is there new to say about career? But I know an author who combined career with the chaos theory and nobody else but her thought of that idea, making her book unique,” she says.