The middle class author is emerging

I love to read Penelope's blog, until I don't anymore. Then a few months later, I read her blog again and love to read it. And this cycle repeats.

Penelope's Guide to Blogging | Penelope Trunk's Brazen Careerist

When I started blogging in November, I was just playing with social media, getting a better understanding of how they all relate to each other. Suddenly, my traffic doubled, and I started having fun.

I haven't picked a main theme yet, but do have topics I enjoy writing about. I'd write more about office politics, and management dysfunctions, but it might sound too real to people I work with who may read this blog. So for now, I pick a topic that interests me, and just dump my words on the paper.

Writing my blogs have been great for helping me get my thoughts down in a coherent format quickly, and I think my writing overall has improved. I have two books kicking around in my head, where they've been waiting for the right time to come out. A few weeks ago, I started writing one of them. I won't provide any teasers, but my honey loves me, and if it sucked she'd have told me when I read her the first chapter. But she said it was real good, so I will keep writing.

I know a literary agent, and he once said that in order for a book to be successful, it must be about dogs, self help, weight loss, sex, exercise, or business. We once sat on a sailboat during a sailboat race without wind, and tried to change the "or" to "and", coming up with a book that was about dogs, self help, weight loss, sex, exercise, and business. It was very hard to mold these topics into a story.

The other book bouncing around in my head is a business book, outlining how to perform specific processes in project management. I can probably get it on paper in a few weeks of part time work, and self publish. But one successful author of a business book (Peter Taylor) I corresponded with, provided me an outline he used to get a book deal, and invited me to write my idea in his format to submit to a publisher. He also said not to write the book until I had a publishing deal. I haven't done this yet. Indecision is the key to flexibility. 

Penelope would disagree with his wanting to use a publisher. Her New rules for self publishing blog post outlines the cold hard facts. Publishers help very few people get their books published. Self publishing is a perfectly viable path for writers.

Think of what MySpace and iTunes did for musicians. They created a marketplace for a middle class of musicians to gather a following, and sell their music. I really believe that self publishing, and digital distribution will do the same for writers. People who can write engaging and/or useful stuff, will be able to make a living writing. 

What do you think? Is self publishing a viable option? If I author a book, would you be interested in buying it? You'd probably want to know what it's about first, and I understand this. I promise it will be good.

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