Mike Fook Books – Ebooks | Fiction Thrillers | WTF

I went to bed last night thinking about life.

Am I a writer, or am I not?

Looking at things realistically – I cannot live anywhere outside Thailand on what I make writing my own books. I couldn’t live in the USA on it. Not a chance.

I recently wrote a couple of books that I knew would take off.

They didn’t.

I have a few books in me that I’d love to write – but if I can’t sell the ones that should really take off – then it seems pointless to write the books that are important to me because – knowing me – they are important ONLY to me.

As I slept I saw a math teacher I had in college. He was a silly, young guy, that couldn’t do shit-else, just teach math. He was good at it. He told us he stopped trying to do anything else because he realized he sucked at it. He just taught math and that’s what he lived with.

He told me in the dream… “You’re a writer.”

“You can’t do shit-else better than write.”

Might as well write, I thought when I awoke.

I’m OK with that.

But, the real issue is…

Write WHAT?

Write what I’m passionate about?

I think that will get me about as far as my anti-pedophiles book, “Thailand’s Sickest” which was 120,000+ words and went no fucking place at all.

Should I write the next book I’m passionate about?

I think life as a writer was easier back in the early 1900′s when Jack London was in Hawaii and writing his ass numb. What was there to write about at the time? What nobody knew about – the locals.

What else did he write about? Dogs.

What else? Being on a ship.

Those topics are all finished. There have been more books about all of them than ever needed to be printed.

What are the topics I could write about today and crush it?

I’ll be asking myself that in 39 minutes as I climb onto the mat for sleep tonight.

A couple statements from Jim Blasingame of the SBA (Small Business Administration in the USA).

Small businesses make up more than 99.7% of all employers.

Home-based businesses account for 53 percent of all small businesses.

Writing books in a room in your house is a small business that many of you can do, are doing, or will do in the near future.

The year is 2010. A writer is someone that writes. Eventually the idea is to get paid for it, but, you can call yourself a writer well before you get paid for it. Just like a horse trainer that teaches her own horses tricks doesn’t get paid for it until she finds or creates a job for herself getting paid to teach horses tricks.

Van Gogh’s life was painting and yet for a long time he wasn’t paid for his work at all – he finally sold just one painting, the only one he ever sold. Would you call Van Gogh an artist?

This silly notion that you’re only a writer when you’ve sold something needs to be dismissed by anyone serious about the craft. My brother filled many notebooks with original songs, stories, and diary entries, and yet he wouldn’t consider himself a writer. He says he’s a software tester.

So, it’s not automatic… but, if you identify yourself as a writer – you can call yourself a writer to everyone you meet.

Writing books, ebooks, articles, or sales copy can be a small business you can start in your home – in a separate room and call yourself a writer. You can deduct the room for tax purposes if you don’t do anything else there (see IRS for specifics, it’s more involved than that). If you can’t write at home you can deduct hotel visits where you can write, uninterrupted with plenty of air conditioning and relative quiet.

The book world, like the newspaper world is changing dramatically. Paper-based books are going away and being replaced with something infinitely more flexible, more profitable, more instantaneous than waiting for half-a-year for your paperback book to be published with a printing press.

Ebook writers are a dime-a-dozen, but the cream of the crop will rise and make enough to live on.

If you love to write, and have something to say about a topic, or many topics, start writing now and producing ebooks as you go. The experience will help you figure out what topics you can write about successfully. It will teach you about editing. You’ll learn how to call on some force inside – determination – to help you finish each book you start. You’ll start interacting with other writers, authors, and those in the ebook publishing, audio publishing, and vook publishing world.

Start writing ebooks now as an education, preparing you for becoming part of the cream that is rising to the top.

If any of your books have Thailand as a subject, send them to www.ThailandeBooks.com to see if they’ll publish them digitally for you and sell them on their site.

If not, find another digital publisher that can help. I’ll write more about options for self-publishing, born-digital books in a future post. Stay tuned… there are many options to jump on while the jumping is good.