Creativity

So everyone’s an entrepreneur, and everyone has got a book, a media kit, and a Web site. What’s going to keep you from disappearing in the perpetual onslaught of competing books and media?

So everyone’s an entrepreneur, and everyone has got a book, a media kit, and a Web site. What’s going to keep you from disappearing in the perpetual onslaught of competing books and media?

Your creativity.

The secret of creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.

—ALBERT EINSTEIN

The creativity you bring to everything you do will be essential to setting you apart from your ever-growing number of competitors. Your continuing challenge will be to do the same things your competitors do but to do them differently and better.

Among the endless opportunities you have to be creative are:

• Picking your niche
• How you write and structure your novel or present the information in your nonfiction books
• A small, relevant gadget or gimmick to include with your proposal and your media/speaker’s kit (You want something that packs small, lays flat, and plays big.)
• How you respond to hearing the same questions about your work
• How distinctive, relevant, and worthy of publicity you can make your appearance
• Figuring out new ways to promote and make money from your ideas
• Coming up with ideas for future books

You can be creative in every aspect of your personal and professional life. Few things in life are more satisfying than coming up with ideas and watching them succeed. Think of everything you do to write and promote your books as an opportunity for you to exercise your creativity. This will add a great deal of fun to your life as well as fatten your bank account!

KEEPING IT SIMPLE

Anybody can make the simple complicated. Creativity is making the complicated simple.

—CHARLIE MINGUS

One of the qualities common to successful novels or nonfiction books is simplicity. They are based on simple ideas compellingly communicated by their titles, their covers, and their marketing. So make your ideas clear, compelling, and promotable, but keep them simple.

GUERRILLA TACTICS (From Guerrilla Marketing for Writers)

• Read books on creativity and talk to your networks for ideas on how you can write and promote your books more creatively. Reward people whose suggestions you use.
  (A great book on creativity is Guerrilla Creativity, it’s a must have)
• Do one thing differently every day. If you feel too full of yourself, try writing with your other hand. That will settle you down.
• When everyone is looking in one direction, look the other way.