If you have been wondering how long it takes to become an author, let me share with you what is an ideal timeline.
Now, before I tell you the exact timeline, let me give you a disclaimer.
There is actually no such thing as an exact timeline. Based on my experience working with hundreds of authors, I kind of arrived at an average time period that I believe one should allocate for their book project.
Firstly, it depends on where you are at right now. Have you already finished writing your book? Are you still in the early stages? It obviously depends on that.
It also depends on how much of your attention you can give towards this book project. If you can channel your focus mainly on your book project, then the time period will be much lesser.
Keep these two things in mind as you read along.
I recommend you to look at your book project in 3 different phases: The Writing Phase, The Publishing Phase, and The Marketing Phase.
The Writing Phase
Obviously, you would start with the writing phase. However, the writing phase itself comprises two things – the planning stage and the actual writing.
A lot of people start directly with writing. If you do that, it will take you a lot longer than you think it will. It is wiser to put together an ideal but workable plan, and then follow through with the writing.
What I mean by planning is that you need to have absolute clarity of what your topic should be, who your target reader is, how this book is going to help your readers, how to arrive at your book’s outline, and you will also need chapter-wise mind maps of the entire book.
If you have this level of clarity in your planning phase then the writing becomes a lot easier. Allocate about a week’s time to do this planning and then begin to write.
Now, for the actual writing phase, if you are writing a book that is about 30,000 words long, you should be able to allocate about 60 hours of your time.
How did I arrive at 60 hours? For an average author, it takes about an hour to write 500 words. If you have to write 30,000 words, it will take you 60 hours.
Here is what to remember, if you allocate only an hour of your time every day, you will probably need two months to finish your book. However, if you can spend 2 hours each day doing deep focus writing, then you can actually finish your book in a month’s time.
I have known authors who can finish their book in just 10 days, but those are exceptions. These types of authors would probably shut themselves up in a writer’s retreat. They will totally cut all the distractions from the rest of the world to focus on writing for 6 or 8 hours a day. But in an ideal world, you must allow yourself at least 30 days to 60 days for your writing phase.
The Publishing Phase
During the Publishing phase, you should spend time with your book cover’s design, the interior design and formatting, the actual editing of your book, and all of the other publishing requirements that will make your book interesting on the outside and excitingly engaging within.
Typically, a good editor would take about 30 days to edit a 30,000-word manuscript. You will find editors who would promise that they can edit your book in a week’s time, please remember that the quality of your book depends on the quality of the editing. So work with experienced professional editors who take their time but do a good job.
For cover design, you will probably have to spend another two weeks. And it is another 2 weeks for the final interior design. Roughly, you are looking at about 2 months of work in the publishing phase.
The Marketing Phase
During the Marketing phase, you will have to do loads of things, and it depends on where you are currently at with your book project.
If you already have a website then you can scratch that from your list. However, if you don’t have one, I highly recommend that you get an author-website designed, get a book trailer done, get your media kit ready, spend time in building your launch team, engage with your launch team, get the reviews for your book during the launch, do a lot of promotions to get that bestseller tag for your book, and finally, you’ll have to spend your time in giving a lot of interviews so that you can continually promote your book to a larger audience.
Now, if you noticed, the Marketing phase does not have an exact timeline. The initial set-up itself, before the launch, would take you about a month. And since marketing is an ongoing activity, every month you might want to go on a bunch of Podcasts and appear in front of other people’s audiences in promoting your book. It is an ongoing process! Marketing simply never stops.
With all this in mind, my recommendation is to give yourself 3 to 6 months’ time to write, publish, and market your book. If you want to cut down 6 months to 3 months, then read on to know the 3 things that you should be doing to do this at a much faster pace.
Tip Number 1: Make your book project your Number 1 priority!
Give yourself at least 3 months to focus all your time and attention on the book project. No, at least for 3 months, you will not launch a new webinar and you will not create a new course! This way, you’re not distracted. Focus on your book project. The rest will have to come after.
Tip Number 2: Please do not succumb to Analysis Paralysis.
Analysis Paralysis usually happens to most authors. They are unhappy with their topic, they keep thinking about a better topic, and they keep rereading their manuscript before even giving it to the editor. It can go on for months, years even! They would go around shortlisting 20 different designers before arriving at a decision.
I truly think that is a lot of waste of your time.
Understandably, you want your book to be world-class but there is no such thing as perfect. During all these stages, even after the book has been completed, you will always find reasons and ways to improve your book. Do not get into this mindset of making the book perfect. Just focus on what best you can do at this point in time, and then move on to the next step.
Tip Number 3: Work with a publishing agency.
Please do consider working with a publishing agency.
If you will do everything yourself, you will have to run from pillar to post, looking for the best people to work with. That can waste a lot of your time!
If you work with an agency, they can take a huge number of tedious publishing tasks off your plate, thereby saving you time.
Some publishers may also do a variety of tasks simultaneously. For example, at Happy Self Publishing, we can do the book cover design while the author is still writing the book. Other times, we start working on the book trailer while the editing is going on. Our technique has proven to help book projects to move along the publishing process a lot faster.
So there you have it! Let me just recap the 3 tips quickly.
First, make your book project your number one focus and priority. Second, do not get into analysis paralysis. And third, work with a book publishing agency.
I hope this has given you enough clarity on how much time to budget for your entire book project.
I would love to know what your thoughts are!
If you have any questions or any other ideas that you want to share with me, please do leave them in the comments. I make sure that I read every single comment and I reply so please do that.
Also, I have a lot of other helpful reads that you might have probably missed. If you’re right at the starting stage, you might want to check out “The One Thing That You Need To Become An Author This Year” and another one on, “The Daily Habits Of Super Successful Authors”.
And please do subscribe to the Author Success Show, both on our YouTube Channel, as well as our podcast.
Lastly, do not forget to join our community called Happy Authors Tribe on Facebook.
Our Happy Authors Tribe is a free community where there is a lot of action happening and where like-minded authors hang out. You can join my live training once there!
So to catch all the action, please join Happy Authors Tribe at www.happyselfpublishing.com/tribe.
See you inside our Facebook group!
Happy Authoring!
