At no previous time has it ever been easier and more affordable to write and publish a book, making your message available to the world. But since everybody is doing it, reaching people with a convincing reason to read your book has never been harder.
Amazon has more than twenty million books offered in its database, and it’s adding more than a million every year. Like selling lemonade from a table on the sidewalk, imagine your sales booth in front of your house. Now look up and down the street as far as you can see. If twenty million other houses also have a book, why would anyone stop at your place?
The challenge is always to write something that interests readers, to make them stop at your place instead of twenty million other places. You must grab their attention with the title and first lines, then keep them wanting to find out what happens. Without that, they will flip you off and watch something on TV—when there’s nothing good on any of the hundreds of channels. They are looking for something good, but there’s so much to see or read, what you have to say must stand out like a cut-and-polished diamond on a sandy beach.
