How to Become an Author
My First Book was Published in 2018
My Second Book -” EMOTIONAL RULERSHIP: How Emotions, Principles, Laws, and Emotional Intelligence Affect You as a LEADER” was published in 2022 by Amadi Global Publishing - an imprint of Amadi Global Ltd.
HOW I PUBLISHED MY FIRST BOOK IN THE UNITED KINGDOM
The book on the is my first book published in 2020 - followed by Emotional Rulership: How Emotions, Principles, Laws, and Emotional Intelligence Affect You as a LEADER was published in 2022 by Amadi Global Publishing (AGP), an imprint of Amadi Global LTD.
I was not born an Author. I became who I am today by studying others who had achieved greatness in their lives. I believe that If you don’t write a book about your life experiences - your business activities, and how you did what you’ve done to get to where you are right now – if you don’t put them in a paper, you wouldn’t know how impactful your experiences could be to others. Your story may be an inspiration for other people to take responsibility for their lives.
Secondly, according to Dr Myles Munroe, the Founder of the Bahamas Faith Ministries International (BFMI) and The Myles Munroe International, he said: “Your gifting will die naturally and be buried with you if you don’t write it down for others to read.”
I developed the habit of writing and reading at a very tender age. My parents did not attend formal education. It was never their fault, but they learnt how to write down their names. Even though they did not benefit from education, they encouraged their children, me and my siblings to seek formal education. In the process, I become a prolific writer among my peers.
YOU ARE WHO YOU THINK YOU ARE
“By Their Fruits, You Shall Know them, and likewise, by their Habits, you shall know them.”
People are predictable by their fruits and habits. By their fruits, you shall know them (Matthew 7:16-20 NJV), and likewise, by their habits, you shall also know them. My writing habits dated back to late 1988 as a secondary school boy at Government College Afikpo, in Eastern Nigeria, formerly of the Republic of Biafra. During this period, I had written letters to a Professor and author of a Modern Biology Textbook in the United States of America – a textbook I had fallen in love with. The story was about my passion: My Love of his book, and how his book had inspired me to work hard; a book that inspired me to study medicine and be a doctor when I grew up. Six months later, I got a reply from him, and the content was simple: follow your dreams.
I remembered when I was in Nigeria in 1996, studying Pharmacy in UNN, and spent my holidays with my elder brothers in Bida Road, Odoakpu, Onitsha, Anambra, I used to write letters to The Radio Minaj FM, Obosi, and one of my letters was the best among all at the time . My letters were selected and read from the FM station. It was amazing to hear your name on the Radio in those days. I also wrote letters to some of the Australian Universities for a PhD Scholarship. I also took my writing habits to the highest level by contacting some of the most powerful Nigerian Politicians asking them for Scholarship awards to study overseas.
In 2001, I sent letters to all the 36 Governors in Nigeria, including Gen. Ibrahim Babangida – the former military President of Nigeria, and Senator Ayim Pius Ayim, the Former Senate President of Nigeria at the time. It was Pius Ayim, from State – Ebonyi State - that responded to my letter. I was offered me a Masters’ degree Scholarship at UNN, but I declined the offer. Why? Because my dream was to study abroad.
I knew where I was going. Nigeria was too small for me at the time, so I kept up chasing my dreams, until when a scholarship position from Ebonyi State Government of Nigeria was announced in 2002. I applied. After rigorous interviews, I was selected. Here I am in the United Kingdom, living as a British Citizen. The rest is now a story.
My inspiration for writing My First Book
The inspiration to write books came about 2 years ago, in 2018, after I had built up multi-million-pound businesses in the UK while studying for a PhD programme at the same time. I also toured the United States of America and Poland where I was an “Invited Speaker” at their International Conferences.
I said to myself, “If I had written Executive MBA dissertation and PhD thesis – all by myself, defended and passed them, and started businesses with a zero turnover to making over one million pounds in revenue within a space of 7 years, then why not use those skills gained in Higher Education and as a leader in Business to tell my story? Wow. This could really inspire others to become the best they could be.
With no permanent job to fall back to, in November 2019, I registered a Training Company in London (Amadi Global Ltd) to help train other people who might want to improve on their Leadership and Management skillsets. After designing some of the training materials, I decided to use the COVID-19 lockdown period to complete writing up my book manuscript.
I had the habit of writing a few pages every night. I used the day to earn a living, while the evening and nights became the times for myself and my books. This was in obedience to the word of King Solomon in his Wisdom Book called Ecclesiastes 11:6. In the New International Version (NIV), it reads:
“Sow your seed in the morning, and at evening let your hands not be idle, for you do not know which will succeed, whether this or that, or whether both will do equally well.” On the other hand, The Message Bible had simplified the above statement like this: “Go to work in the morning and stick to it until evening without watching the clock. You never know from moment to moment how your work will turn out in the end. Before the Years Take Their Toll.”
Therefore, I use my 24 hours judiciously. By the 31st of March 2020, I completed writing up the manuscript, and temporality designed the Book cover (Wow! that is pretty awesome!). I even formatted it myself and proofread it before sending it over to a publisher in Oxford, UK to do the rest.
Even though I had formatted it in a layman’s way, the publishers are the professionals. They had to reformat it to the best of their professionalism. Let authors be authors, and let professional book publishers be professionals.
So, here are the top 5 steps I deployed to write my first book.
1. Decide on How Often to Write
I was never interested in how to write a book. But my mindset changed when I attended the Harvard University Strategic Leader Programme in Cambridge. I would not call myself lucky to have met those guys, because I do not believe in the word “luck.” In one of our discussions, one of them told me he had written thirty books. What? Thirty books. How did you do it? I asked. He told me that they wrote them in phases. So, when I returned to my home in Manchester, England, I developed the habit of writing “bits-by-bits” and “chunk-by-chunk”. Especially on weekends, I had spent most of the day and nights writing – just writing whatever comes to my mind. So, by the end of one week, I had written one full chapter. Because when you write, your thoughts change. So, in each chapter, those changes in your thinking and writing are converted to sub-headings and so forth.
You can set a target on how many words to write a day, but I did not count the words. when I chose a topic to write on, I just crack on till my wife starts bugging me, “honey, it’s time to go to bed.” “Really?” I would reply to her and then checked the time on the wall clock in our bedroom. “Just a few minutes, honey. I would shut down the computer.” “It is past midnight.” Oh, dear. I would then close down for the next day. For some reason, I had found it more comfortable writing in the comfort of my bedroom than writing in the study room.
2. Have a Notepad and Pen next to you in your Bedroom.
This is a very bad habit I had developed over the decade - jotting things down on a notepad at night, instead of sleeping like normal people. Over the years, most of my thoughts emerge from the deep part of the ocean like the Whales emerge to the surface of the sea, especially at night. So, whatever your thoughts about the contents of your book, WRITE IT DOWN.
3. Format Your Manuscript before sending it to the Publishers
I thank God for the explosion of YouTube and the internet. In fact, I learned how to format my PhD thesis by watching YouTube. I did it so well that my PhD supervisor was happy while she read it. So, when it came to my Book manuscript, I resorted to watching YouTube Channels on how to format your book. Nothing is secret under the sun. Whatever you do today, thinking is new, my brother, think twice, it is not new. Remember that someone somewhere may have done it, but in a different way. For my people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.
4. Decided how you want to publish – Traditional Publishing vs. Self-publishing
5. Finding the right publisher for your book -
This could take long as most of them would take many weeks to even respond or acknowledge the receipt of your query.
I know some family members wanted me to wait to get the right publisher who can pay good advance payments to publish your book.
Waiting for Book Advances
vs.
Paying Fees To Have Your Book Published
Be ready for rejections. That is why Self-Publishing is becoming very popular in this generation than waiting for weeks only for a publisher to say No, “Your book is not fit for purpose.” I did not want my book to sit on my hard and pen drive for months, only to find that the publishers I had been waiting for to just reply to my email, were indeed not interested in my book. What I just wanted in this stage of my life was for people to read my personal story and convert those stories into inspirational triggers they needed to start their own 1-million pound business. I was not interested in advance fees. I was not writing the book to make money. I want to help others avoid pitfalls in their business, and at the same time become financial Independent. Here are samples of rejections I received from the New York Agency and another from London.
April 14, 2020: New York, USA.
After waiting for over a week or two, in some cases 6 weeks, this is one of the responses I received from publishers. “Thank you so much for allowing …. Agency to consider your material. Unfortunately, after carefully reviewing your query, we’ve determined that this particular project isn’t the right fit for us at this time. As I’m sure you know, the publishing industry changes swiftly now, as do readers’ tastes and trends. As a result, our own agents’ needs shift and change, as well; therefore, we would like to encourage you to consider querying us with future projects as you may deem appropriate.”
April 15, 2020: London, United Kingdom
“Thank you so much for getting in touch with your informative proposal. I am afraid that your proposal does not fit in with our publishing strategy and so we do not feel that we would be the best home for it. I wish you all the very best in your future endeavours in what sounds like a very interesting project.”
As the saying goes, people tend to look for opportunities elsewhere without first exploring untapped opportunities within them. That’s exactly what I did. What I was looking for in New York, was present here in the UK.
Edit the Book Before Signing the Agreement and Paying the charges
·The total cost charged by the Publisher = £499.
Initial fee or deposit = 50% = £249.50
On completion: 50% of the remainder = £249.50
Other publishers had asked for £999, and £1,445. So, the price to pay depended mostly on who you approach.
Stages After Signing Your Contract
Stage 1: Discussion on the book title, change of title and subtitle. Image right was bought using the https://www.123rf.com/
Stage 2: Book Cover design.
The cove design responsibility was now transferred to a Co-founder of MTP publishing. The contents of the Back cover were discussed by email. The maximum word limit for about the book was 200 words. I have more than 250 words, so I removed many words. For the Blurb or the Author Bio, the required maximum word limit was 120 words. You can imagine after describing yourself in 350 words, and then reduced that to only 120 words, the entire bio would have been lost along the way. The more I reduced them, the less the messages became meaningless. I like writing a lot. Some things, that I have written are too wordy and not crunchy. You just have to follow the rules.
Finally, I decided to remove the Author Bio on the back of the book to enable me to express what the book is all about on the back cover.
Stage 3: Creating a Mock-up Cover
After the cover and changes have been agreed, I created the Mock-up cover using the DIY website below and created some fantastic mock-ups to send to your fans.
1. First convert your Cover page from a word document to pdf.
2. Convert the pdf into jpeg using free software - https://pdftoimage.com/
3. Upload the file, and select the final conversion, e.g., pdf to jpg, pdf to PNG
4. The click Download the results either file by file or click the DOWNLOAD ALL button to get them all at once in a ZIP archive.
5. Then go the creativindiecovers.com to create your mock-up book.
https://www.creativindiecovers.com/free-online-3d-book-cover-generator/
As the first stage of preparing the interior format of your book, I have attached a draft for your review and approval. This contains the various aspects of your book. Apart from the text itself, it includes the title page, credits/copyright page, contents page, sections, chapters, headers and footers.
Conclusion
With the knowledge gained from writing a manuscript to publishing, I have decided to turn into a SELF-Publisher and publish my forthcoming books. However, I would still seek the advice of the professionals – book cover design, formatting, and proofreading ensure my future books are appealing to my audience. I hope you enjoyed the bog.
