AUTHORSHIP Development! Practitioner’s Perspective! The A-to-Z Insights for the Aspiring, Emerging and Experienced Authors!

This is about the art of Writing a reflective Book! Each of us has a unique story that has the power to transform lives. However, these stories must be captured to resonate with readers. Writing is a different medium from oral storytelling. This reflection will equip us all with the skills, competencies, and knowledge to effectively capture our stories. Development, mentoring, and coaching are deliberately structured as the path to acquiring these abilities. We recognise that development encompasses formal and informal training and education, serving as the foundation for all human capital development intervention forms. 

I am sharing my experience in writing blogs, social media posts, reports, and books to pass on book-writing knowledge to all aspiring, emerging, and experienced authors. While it’s ideal for authors to have formal qualifications, it’s been proven that a degree is not a prerequisite for becoming an author. The mentor-coaching methodology and approach, in a practical and inclusive way, are here to support those who aspire to become authors. Additionally, this reflection will offer fresh perspectives to emerging and experienced authors. 

Engagement with this reflection is undoubtedly the appropriate start because the title and sub-title contain many explicit and implied messages. As stated, it is about the authors, aspiring, emerging and experienced. It addresses the broad topic of development, which always requires qualification because it can be too broad in its application and confuse people. In this case, it encompasses education, training, and learning in its general form.

I want to suggest that the next logical step is engaging in mentorship to sustain the development and growth of the authors. Once the authors have reached unconscious competence, they must maintain their professional quality and growth through coaching. The context in which the authors function must always be considered. That could be local, national, regional, continental, international, etc. That is unique to each author. That is informed by their perspective, identity, and self-knowledge. The A to Z is equivalent to holistic, meaning that the authors’ overall and complete life aspects matter. One cannot be sure they have considered all aspects of their personal and professional journey. It is always a work in progress towards the purpose of life, but with our guidance, you can feel reassured that you’re on the right path.

The insights come from all vertical, horizontal, and inside and outside directions. They go into one’s space day and night. They require one to be fully present and willing to embrace them. We are appealing to the authors at all levels, namely, the aspiring, emerging and experienced, for as long as they buy into the principle of life-long learning. 

This perspective will take you through the essential sections of a book in a practical manner. As you go through it, you will be made to immerse yourself in the logical steps of book writing. After studying my perspective, you will feel confident to start writing your first book or improve your book writing practice. That is the main objective of sharing my perspective with you. I am taking you through those stages of book writing in this introductory write-up and then diving deeper into these stages in the subsequent editions.

Developing your idea into a concept is usually an imagination. You are encouraged to visualise yourself, having written and published your first or follow-up book.  I want to lead you into being critical about your book writing idea and allowing the concept development to take time before you put pen to paper. Several activities are expected before confirming your concept: researching the industry, benchmarking your idea, engaging other authors, and testing the concept with book lovers and readers. It would be best to be assured that you are addressing a societal gap or need for information and knowledge. Answer the question, why is your book the correct means to address the need society has? Which other ways could that need be met? Who else is trying to close this gap, and how? Under which category would you classify your book and why? Which other similar books and authors are active in this category? Do you have a way to reach out to them and be part of their community?

It is optional to write a series, but it is highly recommended if you want to develop yourself into a specialist author. The implication is that once you have decided to write a series, you may not easily walk away from it. It is a professional commitment, as you might have raised the expectations of your readers. Such a decision, to a certain extent, dictates the direction of your authorship journey. You must be comfortable with it and commit to delivering on it. It can be a beautiful journey, especially if you are gifted and enlightened in the subject you are writing about. 

As the author, one of the competencies you need is formulating the table of contents. This is a list of titles and themes that constitute your entire book. There should be a clear build-up from the first to the last chapter. The titles of your chapters must be well thought through and communicate the theme that the chapter is about. Secondly, it must be located at the correct point in the book. In other words, it must follow the flow of the main story of your book. I will explore how to acquire and apply this competence. Paying attention as you read this reflection, you will experience this expertise being applied. You will also learn how to assemble the table of contents and when to do so. You will realise that putting together the table of contents goes together with the title of the chapters of your book.

BOOK DESCRIPTION: Your book description is the door into the entire book and should contain the hook that makes the reader want to read further. We want to establish the purpose for which you wrote the book. Is your book reflective, story, informative, educational, etc.? What do you want to achieve with the book? The length of the description is not essential. What is important is that the book’s purpose is transparent to the reader. Take note that there should be a difference between the description and summary of the book. It is recommended that you leave the writing of the book’s description to the last. If you write the book summary at the beginning of your writing project, you may limit your innovation and creativity. It is seldom the case that your book will be exactly as you envisioned it. 

DEDICATION: This is the shortest section of the book. Not all authors want to dedicate their books to someone. However, this practice is highly regarded. It is the opportunity for the author to honour someone special to them. In most cases, a family member and a professional mentor or coach played a huge role in the author’s development. I dedicated my first book to my late mother. She died on the 15th of September 2020, and I published my first book on the 30^th of March 2023. So, the loss of my mother is still very fresh in my mind. I wanted to honour her for bringing me up as a single parent. My book readers highly appreciated this. So, writing dedication is unique to each author. It is a private matter and therefore should not be too long. It may not appeal to all the readers, though. The author must want it and be happy with it. When it appeals to your readers, it is a plus to you, the author. It is published right at the beginning chapters of the book. 

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: Like dedication, acknowledgements are reserved for special people in the author’s personal and professional development journey. Deciding who to acknowledge and who to leave out is always challenging. What qualifies someone to be included in your acknowledgement is a personal matter. However, the author should avoid comparing or ranking people’s importance to him or her. Every person in the author’s life is unique and should be recognised for that uniqueness. The other challenge is remembering and identifying all the people who contributed to your personal and professional development since you were born. I am fortunate that my memory served me very well, and I can recall the many mentors, coaches, guardians, elders, and teachers who contributed to my development journey. I advise anyone aspiring to become an author to keep a record of the milestones and people in your life. Maintaining the relationships is a professional practice. You may never know who you must include in your future projects.

Secondly, people may not be impressed with you returning to them after many years of not being in touch just because you want to include them in your list of acknowledgements in your book. However, if you have been good at managing relationships, you need not worry about that. Everybody wants to be associated with someone good at interpersonal relationships. Even though you do not compare people with each other on the list of acknowledgements, you should have a methodology that you use to list them. This does not need to be known to the public and your readers. When they read your book, they will discover it. On doing benchmarks, we found out that the acknowledgement pages are kept short. This suggests that the authors select people who are associated with them, personally or professionally. The acknowledgements in my first book make a chapter since the book is about my life from childhood, and I made sure that I acknowledge people at each stage of my personal and professional development. It will be different in my future books. 

FOREWORD: This is one of the book sections I liked the most. As the author, you would have people you admire in your life. You pick them up and are given your manuscript to study and write a foreword for your book. It is always an honour for someone to be invited to write the foreword to other people’s books. If chosen, please do yourself a favour and thoroughly read the manuscript and genuinely reflect on its content as you write the foreword. Your foreword, just like the book description, serves as the window into the entire book. It is taken as the reader’s objective view of the book’s content. The authors must be cautious in sourcing the writer of the foreword of their books. You reward somebody for associating with you and your brand as the author. They must be professional, ethical, and willing to add value to your book. They will also benefit from the success of your book. They must be prepared to work hard. You are responsible for briefing and working with them throughout their foreword writing.

The foreword writer is not a critique of your book. You will likely be expected to edit their foreword to align with the content. But you must not change the content of their foreword. It would be best to be comfortable with their independent and objective views of your book. Will you live with their contribution to your book forever, or are there risks that you will regret taking by inviting them to be the author of your book’s foreword? Why are you considering the people for writing your book’s foreword? Can you show the evidence of their meaningful contribution to your personal and professional development journey? How would you propose to them, engage with them, and negotiate for their contribution as the writers of your book’s foreword? Are they able to leave a lasting impact, assured or not?

In the follow-up posts, I will investigate the following aspects of book writing:

• Developing book concept
• The book series
• Structure of the book
• Titling the chapters
• Referencing
• Book writing methodology
• Compiling the manuscript
• Production and publishing
• Book Pricing (policy and strategy)
• Benchmarking and revision
• Got to market drive.
• Book launch and post-launch
• Book review
• Critiquing the book
• Joining a community of authors
• Book Summary 
• About the author section

SOURCE OF REFLECTION: I am using my first book as a source of reflection for this series, Holistic CAREER Development COACHING and MENTORSHIP Perspective! The book is available on Amazon in three versions: (1) eBook on Kindle for USD15.00, (2) Paperback for USD20.00, and (3) Hardcover for USD25.00. 

BOOK ORDER DETAILS: Amazon Retail Online Store  

Hardcover Edition; https://a.co/d/2JjQL3m Paperback Edition; https://a.co/d/gMeIxcl 

eBook Edition on Kindle, https://www.amazon.com/Mentorship-Coaching-Philosophy-Perspective-ebook/dp/B09Y4299TL  

Author Page: You may subscribe to and follow my Author Page, https://amazon.com/author/coach-samtsima-2023 

Previous Episodes of the Book Review: INSIGHTS Online Podcast, https://insightsonlinepodcast.com  

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