I think those are really good points, Tim!

I recently self-published my first book (I previously published an academic book with a highly respected publisher in my field) and here’s what I learned from the process:

From a purely financial perspective, publishing a book is a really, really bad way of spending your time (which — due to the advice of successful authors — I had known from the beginning, hence I limited the amount of effort and time that went into it).

You can earn a lot more by doing other things during that time, such as creating courses or growing your network.

The benefits of writing a book is that:
- it’s a way to help people I can’t otherwise help (for instance, not everyone would be able to pay for my coaching but almost everyone can afford a book for a few bucks),
- it’s a really enjoyable way to express my thoughts and my approach in a coherent and deep way (rather than in a string of separate, relatively short blog posts),
- it can help with building authority (which is helpful if one already has a service one is selling that one can build on but it’s not so helpful for people who are starting from scratch), and
- it can be a labor of love (which has its own merits).

All of these aims can be achieved without treating the book like the most important thing we’ll do for our career/business because for many people, it probably won’t be the game changer they expect it to be.

I know for me it wasn’t which I’m totally okay with. I got a lot of amazing self-growth out of it and I love that I now that something to offer to people that almost everyone can afford.

Getting clear on one’s audience, one’s product/services, improving one’s marketing message…all those are typically way more important for self-employed people than writing a book.