How to know if you should write a book in Singapore

I looked at the queue.

It was ridiculous. There were at least 13 people waiting for me to sign the book I had just given them in a sealed envelope.

Deep inside, I kept thinking,

What if they found out I was a fraud?

That I wasn’t as great as I looked?

I had just finished a 3 hour workshop with university students, and passed them a copy of my book after the training session.

I didn’t expect this.

Especially not when the book had been through ‘hybrid publishing’. That’s a fancy way for saying that you pay money to get your book published. I had done it with Candid Creation, paying a total of $11,500 for it to have:

1. Initial structuring and development
2. Manuscript editing
3. Printing of 500 copies
4. Pitching to the media

But since publishing it in 2023 April, it had laid under my bed, gathering dust.

1.5 years later, it was finally beginning to gain more traction.

I share this story because I want you to know that deciding to write a book for me was tough. I had harboured such thoughts since being an 8-year-old.

Then, I had written all of 3 pages, before putting it away, and never seeing it again.

Your hesitation

We get it. Writing a book is hard.

It takes time, money, and it can seem like you’re blowing your own trumpet. In Singapore, it can seem even worse. There’s the common joke about how artists in Singapore would end up starving.

Would you end up seeing your book be a waste of money, and more importantly, a waste of precious paper?

Before looking at whether you should write a book, it’s worth looking at the logistics of it.

I always like telling wannabe authors,

wanting to write a book is easy.

Getting the book out is crazy.

The initial desire comes easy. But the later part of getting the book out, is what is going to make it more difficult.

You’re going to have drafts thrown back at you by your editor, you will face multiple times where you’re staring at the manuscript, wondering what exactly you’re trying to say, and then other times when self-doubt creeps in and you think that you should really burn your book.

Having seen at least 7 authors, we now know that there are 3 areas that tend to trip up authors.

You should run through this checklist before actually deciding to go ahead.

1. Time
   
   1. Do you have enough time to write the book (minimally 30 minutes a day)?
      
      1. We’ve seen one author struggle through his book for 3 years because he had a very busy training schedule, and he was unable to keep the momentum for writing.
2. Money
   
   1. Do you have enough money to print the book? We recommend at least $6000 for printing 500 copies.
      
      1. Here we do not recommend ebooks because the credibility building part of ebooks (at least in Singapore), still tends to be unreliable.
3. Expertise
   
   1. Do you have enough expertise in the area that will further the insight/knowledge in the field?
      
      1. If you don’t, it may make for a scant book. You might have to conduct interviews to get more information.
         

How much time do you have?

I started writing my third book with Candid Creation on 7 Feb 2022. This was the first ever full length, print book I would do. The previous two had been a short series of 22 inspirational messages (printed), and the second had been an ebook.

Both hadn’t done well.

That’s why I enlisted the help of a professional hybrid publisher that I thought would keep me on track to complete it.

As you can see from the schedule above, it was a hard slog. 7 months, and we would be published.

Within 4 months, we would be submitting the final manuscript.

My final manuscript ended up taking 8 months, rather than prearranged 4. I was writing 300 words every day, without fail.

I would end up arranging 21 interviews with different career high-flyers, as I didn’t have the requisite experience to write a book on careers, and had to interview others for the expertise.

Authors often underestimate how much time it takes for them to write a book. It’s vital that you put in buffer time.

Writing is also a discipline, and isn’t something you can just wing.

The only way to complete a book is to sit there, daily, and write it, regardless of how you feel.

How much money do you have?

Recently, David Lim, a motivational speaker who once scaled Mount Everest, shared about his book writing experience.

Your advice on book publishing is helpful except for the costings.

You can get layouts done through sites like Fiverr or freelancer.com for a few hundred.

There’s also POD – print on demand afterwards for getting the physical copy out versus the more expensive, larger print runs needed by offset litho type printing option.

My context: I’ve had 2 hardcopy books published and distributed commercially without needing to invest my own money, and a 3rd self published.

A 4th will be out in a month, and costing (most likely) less than $7000, including layout, cover designs, and offset printing on sustainable paper stock for 2000 copies.

I have sold about 25,000 copies of all my books in total.

You definitely should not underestimate the money taken to write a book.

As much as many of us may want to be published by Penguin, and to get an advance, if you’re a first time author, this is not likely to be the case. You will likely need to pay money for self-publishing.

What expertise do you have?

What’s your expertise?

If you don’t have much, you might struggle to fill 150 pages of words.

That’s about 18k words.

As a 25 year old with only one year of working experience I wrote my first book for social workers.

I realised that I could only come up with about 20k words.

To build a good enough book, you need imputed authority (what people give to you, if you interview them for the book, for example), or implicit authority (what you already have as a result of your achievements in your career).

It is why you see most authors only writing books towards the tail end of their career, when they have achieved a substantial amount, and are perhaps at the C-Level of the organisation.

Or you might think that because of your personal narrative, you can share something useful.

This is where you have a unique experience you can share with others.

For example, in my book below, I shared my personal experience of recovering through depression. This gave me the authority to write, despite not having vast amounts of professional experience.

Just write first, and think later

Whilst it can often seem attractive to gain more information, at some point, you just have to start writing.

You can continue being stuck in your self doubt, but that may not be the most useful thing in the long run.

If you think you have a story within you, write it first. Worry later about how it’s going to sell.

Because your story, is worth telling.

Why not approach us to help with publishing your story?