I have been on the Internet for quite some time now, and I have noticed that when it comes to people creating information products, such as ebooks, or reports, they automatically think that they have to be perfect before they either give them away, or sell them. I don’t know why people think this way, but it could be because of the fact that when you sent your manuscript to the big publishing houses, they were expecting perfection.
However, today, anyone who has access to a computer can publish a book without worrying about the big publishing houses. That’s because most people online are self-publishing, which means that they write the work, and sell it themselves from their own web sites. No longer do you need somebody’s permission to sell your own work, and no longer are you stuck with the commissions that the big publishing houses give you because they take most of the money up front. By self-publishing, you get to keep any and all money made, and that’s the beauty of this business.
It really doesn’t matter what your topic of interest is because there are people out there who are interested in it. Believe me, the Internet is so crammed full of information, and more of it is being crammed in even as I write this. So there’s no shortage of topics in which to write on these days. All that it takes is a little imagination, and you’re off!
Remember the days when writing a book really was a chore? You know, dragging out the electric typewriter, putting a sheet of paper into it and tapping away at those noisy keys just to produce a single page of work, wich by the way, took some time to really produce. Then, if you had made a mistake, the piece of paper got ripped out of the typewriter and thrown into the garbage can, which by now is quite full of papers filled with tons and tons of mistakes. Do you remember those days? I know that I can, and I don’t miss them one single bit either. The only thing good about those days was that I did learn how to type, and that has paid off quite well.
Then came the stand-alone word processors made by Brother and Smith Carona, just to name a few, and those were a huge help because you could then correct your mistakes before they got onto the page. They were in fact the first machines that wrote text that also stored it onto disks to be used in the school, or office. They were in my opinion, the precursor to the home computer.
I had one of those Brother word processors and I loved it. I wish that I still had it just for keepsakes, but I had given it to a church back in the 1990’s. Technically that was my first working computer that I was able to use. I remember distinctively buying tons and tons of those 3 and a half inch floppy disks that are now so obsolete. Yup, those were the days.
The word processor could only store about 30,000 charactors, far less than one megabyte of course, but at that time, I was really impressed at the storage capacity. Boy have times changed!
Ever since those word processors came out, the average joe could finally release something that wasn’t full of mistakes and errors because they could all be corrected before the document was printed. Well the same exact thing could be said about today’s modern computer systems. As powerful as they are, they still retain that level of simplicity that those Brother word prosessors had. That is, you could write your work, save it onto a disk, and print it later on if you wish. Of course today’s computers are far more complex than those Brother word processors were back in the early 1990’s. If I remember, I paid about $600 for that Brother word processor, and boy o boy, did I ever use the darn thing. It had a very tiny little screen that actually lit up like computer screens do today. Basically I used that word processor as my computer because that’s what it really was.
I really used the heck out of that word processor, and I stored all kinds of files onto those floppy disks. I rarely printed on it because I was impressed with the whole idea of just storing stuff onto those floppies.
Of course, now, I have a full-blown computer system just like everybody else has, and I love it! Ok, so let’s get back to the topic at hand,m and that is that you shouldn’t feel that you need to be a perfect writer to produce something worth reading.
It is important to note that not all authors are perfect writers, and not all editors are perfect either. Believe me, even editors of books make their share of mistakes because sometimes they miss errors that the author had made.
Don’t worry about perfection because nobody is perfect. Instead, think more on the topic that you’re writing about and focus upon the content that you are going to give in the book. The content is the most important, not how accurate you are. Now I am not saying in any way that accuracy should be thrown out the window because the more accurate you are, the better the book.
It is just thta you don’t really need to focus on perfection while writing your material. You should instead, focus upon the content that you’re adding into the book. That’s the most important thing. Sure, after you have finished the writing, you can go back and edit your work and correct any spelling and gramatical mistakes you may have made, but that’s really done at the end of the writing process.
It is like when I am writing these posts for you to read. I don’t focus too much on how perfect the writing is, I just write. I try to convey the information in the clearest way possible with minimal mistakes if at all possible.
Writing can be a whole lot of fun, but you have to have the nack for it. Writing isn’t one of those things that just anyone can get into. You really have to have a love for it. I am one of those people. I love to write and to convey information to people. I love teaching people how to do things through the medium of writing on the computer. The only really good advice that I can give you concerning your writing, is to make sure that the information that you are giving out is accurate and precise. That is the most important thing. If the information is false, or simply isn’t appliable no longer, then it may not be worth mentioning in your book.
You will find in INternet marketing a whole lot of information that simply isn’t appliable no longer, or simply isn’t used as much as the more current stuff is. However, this doesn’t mean that the information really isn’t useful because in some cases, it might be.
Take for example, blog and ping. That is a technique that was widely used when the blog was really coming into play online. However, now, pings are automatically done by the blogging software itself, so you really don’t have anything to do with that technique. However, this doesn’t mean that when you’re writing an ebook, that you can’t mention it and how it works because it will provide an overall history of the process to people who are reading the material.
However, like I said, don’t worry about perfection because if you do, then you’re only trying to make it harder on yourself to write the material. You want to make it as easy on yourself as possible, and simply not worrying about perfection is really a good start in the right direction. You want to keep your mind focused on the content, not so much on the accuracy of your writing itself. That can come wlater when you edit the work. The editing time is when you start to focus upon accuracy and if you want to call it that; perfection. However, don’t spend too much of your editing time writing and rewriting the book. Don’t over edit the book until you start to see that the book is taking on a whole different meaning than what you had planned.
Instead, edit the book in such a way that you’re satisfied with it and so that it finally makes sense, and is also appealing to others. Don’t even think about perfection because you’ll never reach that level.
