I’ve been talking about writing books for years.
I’ve written thousands of articles, created courses, newsletters, guides and probably several books’ worth of random thoughts scattered across Google Docs, Notes and various folders on my laptop, but becoming a proper published author has somehow remained permanently on my “I’m definitely doing that” list.
So when I recently reconnected with my old friend Sharon E. Buck, I knew I had to get her on for a chat.
Sharon and I have known each other for around 15 years, going right back to our early days building businesses online, and while I’ve been bouncing around the world building various businesses, Sharon has quietly built herself an impressive career as an independent author.
She’s now written 26 books under her own name, ghostwritten another 10 or 12, built an engaged readership and learned an enormous amount about what it takes to turn writing books into a business.
So I basically hijacked her for an hour and asked her everything I wanted to know. 😂
We talked about:
how she comes up with ideas and turns them into books
why changing a book cover led to 38,000 downloads in 32 days
writing shorter books and why they’re working so well for her
editing, formatting and preparing a book for Amazon KDP
Kindle Unlimited versus publishing “wide”
building an email list that sells books
getting reviews and using advance readers
Facebook and Amazon advertising
how AI is changing writing and publishing
Sharon’s daily writing practice and how she publishes four or five books a year
what she’d do differently if she were starting again today
We even squeezed in a little chat about travel and house sitting before realising we’d been talking for over an hour and still hadn’t covered half the questions on my list.
If you’ve ever thought, “I’d love to write a book one day,” grab a coffee and join us.
And yes, Sharon, I’m taking you up on that round two. 😁
