If you search for the Pros of writing a manuscript and publishing it, most articles will mention things like:<ul><li>Visibility </li><li>Networking </li><li>Lead-Generation </li><li>Personal Brand SEO </li><li>As James Altucher said about self-publishing, it can be your new business card. </li></ul>

Pros of writing a manuscript

<ul><li>You will learn how to talk clearly. A good writer never wastes time from his readers. Neither an entrepreneur should waste the time of his customers or employees. Clear communication solves both problems.</li><li>You will become curious and handle feedback better. Even when we dominate the subject, the need to organize ideas, make references and consult other specialists in the area paves a path for curiosity.</li><li>The outline will be the tool to organize your ideas and sharpen your arguments. </li><li>Pre-sales will teach you an important lesson about delivering on time.</li></ul>

Other benefits, often neglected, from writing

Writer's block is not a lack of inspiration but a lack of motivation and research. There is a third element that can make you stuck: lack of urgency. A considerable share of the books that are started, ends unfinished. This happens because people have no deadlines, no clear targets. How to solve it? Pre-launch. Promise to deliver it on a certain date. People will pre-order your book and you will need to deliver it to them. Your image will be at risk and your skin will be

Lack of urgency

<figure><img alt="" src="https://miro.medium.com/max/500/0*KnVPXgQ2eB9" width="680" height="453"><figcaption class="id ie cz cx cy if ig ce b ga cg fi" data-selectable-paragraph="" dir="ltr">Photo by <a href="https://unsplash.com/@finesite?utm_source=medium&amp;utm_medium=referral" class="ck ih" rel="noopener nofollow" dir="ltr">krisna iv</a> on <a href="https://unsplash.com/?utm_source=medium&amp;utm_medium=referral" class="ck ih" rel="noopener nofollow" dir="ltr">Unsplash</a></figcaption></figure>The writer Joseph Epstein — don’t confuse him with Jeffrey Epstein — <a href="https://publishingperspectives.com/2011/05/200-million-americans-want-to-publish-books/" rel="noopener nofollow" dir="ltr">once wrote</a>:<BLOCKQUOTE>81 percent of Americans feel that they have a book in them — and should write it.</BLOCKQUOTE>We all have many stories of defeats, victories, and experiences to tell each other. The increasing number of podcasts or YouTube channels where people from all age narrates their lives proves this. We all have a book inside us — sometimes, more than one. But still, very few people put this on paper. A tiny fraction publishes it.The most common excuse is that publishing a book demands considerable work.This is true, I will not lie. Besides all the work, often it is also expensive.Still, it is a positive experience. If you search for the Pros and cons of writing a manuscript and publishing it, most articles will mention things like:<UL><LI>Visibility</LI><LI>Networking</LI><LI>Lead-Generation</LI><LI>Personal Brand SEO</LI><LI>As James Altucher said about <a href="http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2012/01/self-publishing-your-own-book-is-the-new-business-card/" rel="noopener nofollow" dir="ltr">self-publishing</a>, it can be your new business card.</LI></UL>All these perks may be true. But there are other benefits, often neglected, from writing. Advantages that are useful even if you are swimming in leads and have all the visibility you could wish for.In this article, I will list how writing a book improved skills that later turned to be useful in managing <a href="https://entrepreneurshandbook.co/8-free-tools-that-boosted-my-business-on-the-internet-61dfc8c1991f" rel="noopener" dir="ltr">my two different businesses</a>.<h1 data-selectable-paragraph="">You will learn how to talk clearly</h1>Writing a book is not the same as writing an e-mail or a blog post. In these cases, you are writing for a public that knows you or your subject — sometimes, both. This is not the case when you publish a 100-page essay, for example. Most of the readers never heard about you before, and some of them are new to your topic.<a rel="noopener" href="https://medium.com/inspired-writer/7-writing-tips-from-a-best-seller-genius-cc0c06159c48" dir="ltr">You must write clearly, get rid of language vices, and use every word wisely</a>. If you hire an editor to trim your prose, there is a big chance he will decimate your word count. <a rel="noopener" href="https://medium.com/inspired-writer/one-essential-book-for-writers-and-what-i-learned-from-it-2d6207233225" dir="ltr">Editors are trained to detect what they call stick or filler words</a>. These are terms that when cut out of a phrase, don’t affect the meaning. Since they do not contribute to the message, they just waste the reader’s time. Writing a book will help you reduce verbosity and describe better what you want to explain.A good writer never wastes time from his readers. Neither an entrepreneur should waste the time of his customers or employees. Clear communication solves both problems. Clear communication helped me to write <a rel="noopener" href="https://medium.com/swlh/how-to-write-an-impressive-business-plan-35c763c92f62" dir="ltr">a good business plan</a> to find new investors.<BLOCKQUOTE>We are writing all day every day to each other. You should see some of the emails I get from StartupBros readers… they are totally incomprehensible. I feel bad because these people are stuck in life but it’s so obvious why: they can’t even write a decent email! Communication is necessary to do anything in life, the smoother your communication, the more opportunities you have. Think about it, how will you get hired if you can’t communicate why you should be hired? How will you get a significant other if you can’t communicate with them? How can you sell a product if you can’t communicate to someone why they should buy it?! If you’re stuck, mastering communication might be the best path to getting unstuck.</BLOCKQUOTE>What is a book, if not a lengthy message that you want to convey to an unknown public? How is that different from a job interview or a pitch deck presentation to convince investors?<h1 data-selectable-paragraph="">You will become curious and handle feedback better.</h1>Phillip Lopate, in his book <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15802982-to-show-and-to-tell" rel="noopener nofollow" dir="ltr">To Show and to Tell</a>, explains how the lack of understanding about oneself leads either to self-depreciation or a smug attitude, and both represent obstacles for creativity.<BLOCKQUOTE>An odor of self-disgust mars many performances, […] The proper alternative to self-dislike is not being pleased with oneself — a smug complacency that comes across as equally distasteful — but being curious about oneself. I am convinced that self-amusement is a discipline that can be learned.</BLOCKQUOTE>Writing is an exercise of curiosity. Even when we dominate the subject, the need to organize ideas, make references and consult other specialists in the area paves a path for curiosity, for the willingness to explore both our subject and ourselves.You will also discover your flaws.This happened when I wrote my <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Starting-Your-Own-Business-Home/dp/B08L4FL9L4" rel="noopener nofollow" dir="ltr">book about entrepreneurship abroad</a>. Something that I had experience with — <a href="https://medium.com/swlh/%E2%80%8AI%20opened%20two%20different%20businesses%20on%20a%20continent%20foreign%20to%20me" rel="noopener" dir="ltr">I opened two different businesses on a continent foreign to me</a>. Still, during my research phase, I discovered that some things I was doing wrong — for example, ignoring <a rel="noopener" href="https://medium.com/feedium/how-to-legally-reduce-the-medium-tax-withholding-to-only-10-in-1-hour-be846e436e2d" dir="ltr">tools that could help me pay smaller taxes</a>. Even if my book didn’t sell a single copy (fortunately it sold more than that), this knowledge alone already paid off for the time I spent writing it.When you write a manuscript, before publishing you should send your material to beta-readers. They are other authors, people familiar with the subject, and sometimes even family or friends that will read your book before it goes to the public.They will provide feedback. This feedback must be rigorous. It must be harsh. When a book goes to the shelves and people buy it, there is no way back. You must publish the best version of your ideas.After you receive your first critical feedback, the second will not hurt so much. After the third, fourth or fifth, it may even become pleasant to be bashed — every critique is an enormous chance for improvement! To know how to handle criticism is a crucial ability to start and run a successful enterprise.<h1 data-selectable-paragraph="">The outline will be the tool to organize your ideas and sharpen your arguments.</h1>Since <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Moving-Working-Abroad-Keeping-Sanity-ebook/dp/B084GF14CZ" rel="noopener nofollow" dir="ltr">my first book</a>, I adopted the habit of doing an outline before writing.An outline is a tool that writers use to organize ideas about a subject into a logical, hierarchical order. Think about topics, problems, solutions, subtopics, additional material, and so on.Do you know where else I started to use outlines? Business meetings. The same tool that helped me to organize my book writing now helps me to organize meetings with suppliers or staff. It benefits everyone, saves time, and drives the participants to faster and better conclusions.Lori Matzke, author of <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Home-Staging-Creating-Buyer-Friendly-Rooms/dp/0975598708" rel="noopener nofollow" dir="ltr">Home Staging: Creating Buyer-Friendly Rooms to Sell Your House</a> and also an entrepreneur, <a rel="noopener" href="https://medium.com/publishizer/top-10-reasons-business-experts-are-writing-books-e3203e1671b8" dir="ltr">said that outlining her ideas</a> made her realize better ways of communicating them to her clients in person.When you are writing a longer paper, you will benefit from organization, consistency, breaking bigger objectives into smaller ones — I had a target of writing at least 2 pages per working day — and find motivation and inspiration during your walks on the park. <a rel="noopener" href="https://medium.com/the-ascent/how-deep-work-can-turn-you-into-a-productive-beast-20c5d1479f5" dir="ltr">Writing a book is deep work, and deep work boosts productivity</a>.Some people believe in the myth of writer’s block. I don’t. Every time I had a good outline and was prepared enough, I had no block. What causes it is not a lack of inspiration, but poor motivation and research.Yes, research.Writing a book requires plenty of research. You will need to sharpen your arguments across paragraphs, and pages, and chapters. If your book is well-researched and has a 3-digit page count, even if you were not a specialist on the subject before the first paragraph, by the last page you will be.<h1 data-selectable-paragraph="">Pre-sales will teach you an important lesson about delivering on time</h1>In a previous paragraph, I wrote that what causes the so-called writer’s block is not lack of inspiration but lack of motivation and research. But there is a third element that can make you stuck.Lack of urgency.When you don’t have a deadline, when you don’t have people expecting you to deliver something, you get lazy. That happened to a fellow entrepreneur. Used to the heavy routines of a multinational company headquarter, he left to open his business — a touristic hostel, just like mine. He got sluggish. The absence of a boss made him think he didn’t need to respond to anyone, and this dropped his <a href="https://entrepreneurshandbook.co/the-five-principles-of-exceptional-service-b972517db1e4" rel="noopener" dir="ltr">service quality</a>.The same can happen when you write a book. A <a href="https://thewritepractice.com/cant-finish-writing/" rel="noopener nofollow" dir="ltr">considerable share of the books that are started, ends unfinished</a>. This happens because people have no deadlines, no clear targets.How to solve it? Pre-launch. Promise to deliver it on a certain date. People will pre-order your book and you will need to deliver it to them. Your image will be at risk and your <a rel="noopener" href="https://medium.com/p/how-nassim-nicholas-taleb-saved-my-business-b6a12368beed" dir="ltr">skin will be in the game</a>. These are excellent motivators.During my first book, I not only pre-launched, but in fact, <a rel="noopener" href="https://medium.com/swlh/crowdfunding-5-simple-but-essential-lessons-from-my-last-campaign-7f682d7c7e59" dir="ltr">I crowdfunded the book</a>, selling almost 100 copies before writing it. I promised to deliver it on 25.09.2019. Needless to say that during the weeks and months preceding the launching, I had no time to have writer’s block. There is no block when you have a deadline blinking on your screen.<h2 data-selectable-paragraph="">When you finish, you take out the goat from the room — and look for a new one.</h2>Repeating what I wrote at the very beginning of this article: to write a valuable book, fiction or non-fiction, takes time. It demands work. If any website or internet guru says the opposite, either they are misguided or they are talking about low-content brochures.In my case, I count, between writing and editing time, 40 minutes per page. This means that a 200-page book will consume close to 135 hours of my time.Volunteer for such a demanding task is respectable. When you begin it, you are placing a goat inside your room.Wait, what?Sorry, I forgot to explain the Brazilian fable of the goat inside the room, in case you are not familiar with it.The Goat Inside the Room.A long time ago, a father of a family with serious difficulties, living in a tiny house with many children, went to ask for the help of the village priest. After hearing his drama, the priest gave him a goat with the recommendation that, for a week, the man keep the animal in his room. After this period, the poor man should then return to the church. A week later, the man returned. The priest asked: And then? Have things improved? - No, priest. It hasn’t improved… The goat is dirtying the floor, waking up the kids, occupying a lot of space, stealing our meager food suppliers… - So, return the goat and come back in a week. Said the priest. The man returned the goat and a week later he returned. Again the priest asked: So? Have things improved? - Now, your priest, my life has never been so wonderful. Without the goat, we have space in the room and we no longer have that bad smell. And there the happy man went back to his home, thanking God for his new life.When you have a full-time job or a company to manage, finding time for writing hundreds of pages will demand an organized routine. Some people wake up earlier, others go to sleep late.Once you finish writing your book, this extra time created will be there, free, shining for you.You will ask yourself What can I do now?You took the goat from the room. That is when good ideas pop up.

We all have many stories of defeats, victories, and experiences to tell each other. The increasing number of podcasts or YouTube channels where people from all age narrates their lives proves this…

Stashed ideas

The writer Joseph Epstein — don’t confuse him with Jeffrey Epstein — <a dir="ltr" href="https://publishingperspectives.com/2011/05/200-million-americans-want-to-publish-books/" rel="noopener nofollow">once wrote </a>:

81 percent of Americans feel that they have a book in them — and should write it.

We all have many stories of defeats, victories, and experiences to tell each other. The increasing number of podcasts or YouTube channels where people from all age narrates their lives proves this. We all have a book inside us — sometimes, more than one. But still, very few people put this on paper. A tiny fraction publishes it.

The most common excuse is that publishing a book demands considerable work.

This is true, I will not lie. Besides all the work, often it is also expensive.

Still, it is a positive experience. If you search for the Pros and cons of writing a manuscript and publishing it, most articles will mention things like:

<ul><li>Visibility </li><li>Networking </li><li>Lead-Generation </li><li>Personal Brand SEO </li><li>As James Altucher said about <a dir="ltr" href="http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2012/01/self-publishing-your-own-book-is-the-new-business-card/" rel="noopener nofollow">self-publishing </a>, it can be your new business card. </li> </ul>

All these perks may be true. But there are other benefits, often neglected, from writing. Advantages that are useful even if you are swimming in leads and have all the visibility you could wish for.

In this article, I will list how writing a book improved skills that later turned to be useful in managing <a dir="ltr" href="https://entrepreneurshandbook.co/8-free-tools-that-boosted-my-business-on-the-internet-61dfc8c1991f" rel="noopener">my two different businesses </a>.

Writing a book is not the same as writing an e-mail or a blog post. In these cases, you are writing for a public that knows you or your subject — sometimes, both. This is not the case when you publish a 100-page essay, for example. Most of the readers never heard about you before, and some of them are new to your topic.

<a dir="ltr" href="https://medium.com/inspired-writer/7-writing-tips-from-a-best-seller-genius-cc0c06159c48" rel="noopener">You must write clearly, get rid of language vices, and use every word wisely </a>. If you hire an editor to trim your prose, there is a big chance he will decimate your word count. <a dir="ltr" href="https://medium.com/inspired-writer/one-essential-book-for-writers-and-what-i-learned-from-it-2d6207233225" rel="noopener">Editors are trained to detect what they call stick or filler words </a>. These are terms that when cut out of a phrase, don’t affect the meaning. Since they do not contribute to the message, they just waste the reader’s time. Writing a book will help you reduce verbosity and describe better what you want to explain.

A good writer never wastes time from his readers. Neither an entrepreneur should waste the time of his customers or employees. Clear communication solves both problems. Clear communication helped me to write <a dir="ltr" href="https://medium.com/swlh/how-to-write-an-impressive-business-plan-35c763c92f62" rel="noopener">a good business plan </a>to find new investors.

We are writing all day every day to each other. You should see some of the emails I get from StartupBros readers… they are totally incomprehensible. I feel bad because these people are stuck in life but it’s so obvious why: they can’t even write a decent email! Communication is necessary to do anything in life, the smoother your communication, the more opportunities you have. Think about it, how will you get hired if you can’t communicate why you should be hired? How will you get a significant other if you can’t communicate with them? How can you sell a product if you can’t communicate to someone why they should buy it?! If you’re stuck, mastering communication might be the best path to getting unstuck.

What is a book, if not a lengthy message that you want to convey to an unknown public? How is that different from a job interview or a pitch deck presentation to convince investors?

You will become curious and handle feedback better.

Phillip Lopate, in his book <a dir="ltr" href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15802982-to-show-and-to-tell" rel="noopener nofollow">To Show and to Tell </a>, explains how the lack of understanding about oneself leads either to self-depreciation or a smug attitude, and both represent obstacles for creativity.

An odor of self-disgust mars many performances, […] The proper alternative to self-dislike is not being pleased with oneself — a smug complacency that comes across as equally distasteful — but being curious about oneself. I am convinced that self-amusement is a discipline that can be learned.

Writing is an exercise of curiosity. Even when we dominate the subject, the need to organize ideas, make references and consult other specialists in the area paves a path for curiosity, for the willingness to explore both our subject and ourselves.

You will also discover your flaws.

This happened when I wrote my <a dir="ltr" href="https://www.amazon.com/Starting-Your-Own-Business-Home/dp/B08L4FL9L4" rel="noopener nofollow">book about entrepreneurship abroad </a>. Something that I had experience with — <a dir="ltr" href="https://medium.com/swlh/%E2%80%8AI%20opened%20two%20different%20businesses%20on%20a%20continent%20foreign%20to%20me" rel="noopener">I opened two different businesses on a continent foreign to me </a>. Still, during my research phase, I discovered that some things I was doing wrong — for example, ignoring <a dir="ltr" href="https://medium.com/feedium/how-to-legally-reduce-the-medium-tax-withholding-to-only-10-in-1-hour-be846e436e2d" rel="noopener">tools that could help me pay smaller taxes </a>. Even if my book didn’t sell a single copy (fortunately it sold more than that), this knowledge alone already paid off for the time I spent writing it.

When you write a manuscript, before publishing you should send your material to beta-readers. They are other authors, people familiar with the subject, and sometimes even family or friends that will read your book before it goes to the public.

They will provide feedback. This feedback must be rigorous. It must be harsh. When a book goes to the shelves and people buy it, there is no way back. You must publish the best version of your ideas.

After you receive your first critical feedback, the second will not hurt so much. After the third, fourth or fifth, it may even become pleasant to be bashed — every critique is an enormous chance for improvement! To know how to handle criticism is a crucial ability to start and run a successful enterprise.

The outline will be the tool to organize your ideas and sharpen your arguments.

Since <a dir="ltr" href="https://www.amazon.com/Moving-Working-Abroad-Keeping-Sanity-ebook/dp/B084GF14CZ" rel="noopener nofollow">my first book </a>, I adopted the habit of doing an outline before writing.

An outline is a tool that writers use to organize ideas about a subject into a logical, hierarchical order. Think about topics, problems, solutions, subtopics, additional material, and so on.

Do you know where else I started to use outlines? Business meetings. The same tool that helped me to organize my book writing now helps me to organize meetings with suppliers or staff. It benefits everyone, saves time, and drives the participants to faster and better conclusions.

Lori Matzke, author of <a dir="ltr" href="https://www.amazon.com/Home-Staging-Creating-Buyer-Friendly-Rooms/dp/0975598708" rel="noopener nofollow">Home Staging: Creating Buyer-Friendly Rooms to Sell Your House </a> and also an entrepreneur, <a dir="ltr" href="https://medium.com/publishizer/top-10-reasons-business-experts-are-writing-books-e3203e1671b8" rel="noopener">said that outlining her ideas </a>made her realize better ways of communicating them to her clients in person.

When you are writing a longer paper, you will benefit from organization, consistency, breaking bigger objectives into smaller ones — I had a target of writing at least 2 pages per working day — and find motivation and inspiration during your walks on the park. <a dir="ltr" href="https://medium.com/the-ascent/how-deep-work-can-turn-you-into-a-productive-beast-20c5d1479f5" rel="noopener">Writing a book is deep work, and deep work boosts productivity </a>.

Some people believe in the myth of writer’s block. I don’t. Every time I had a good outline and was prepared enough, I had no block. What causes it is not a lack of inspiration, but poor motivation and research.

Yes, research.

Writing a book requires plenty of research. You will need to sharpen your arguments across paragraphs, and pages, and chapters. If your book is well-researched and has a 3-digit page count, even if you were not a specialist on the subject before the first paragraph, by the last page you will be.

Pre-sales will teach you an important lesson about delivering on time

In a previous paragraph, I wrote that what causes the so-called writer’s block is not lack of inspiration but lack of motivation and research. But there is a third element that can make you stuck.

Lack of urgency.

When you don’t have a deadline, when you don’t have people expecting you to deliver something, you get lazy. That happened to a fellow entrepreneur. Used to the heavy routines of a multinational company headquarter, he left to open his business — a touristic hostel, just like mine. He got sluggish. The absence of a boss made him think he didn’t need to respond to anyone, and this dropped his <a dir="ltr" href="https://entrepreneurshandbook.co/the-five-principles-of-exceptional-service-b972517db1e4" rel="noopener">service quality </a>.

The same can happen when you write a book. A <a dir="ltr" href="https://thewritepractice.com/cant-finish-writing/" rel="noopener nofollow">considerable share of the books that are started, ends unfinished </a>. This happens because people have no deadlines, no clear targets.

How to solve it? Pre-launch. Promise to deliver it on a certain date. People will pre-order your book and you will need to deliver it to them. Your image will be at risk and your <a dir="ltr" href="https://medium.com/p/how-nassim-nicholas-taleb-saved-my-business-b6a12368beed" rel="noopener">skin will be in the game </a>. These are excellent motivators.

During my first book, I not only pre-launched, but in fact, <a dir="ltr" href="https://medium.com/swlh/crowdfunding-5-simple-but-essential-lessons-from-my-last-campaign-7f682d7c7e59" rel="noopener">I crowdfunded the book </a>, selling almost 100 copies before writing it. I promised to deliver it on 25.09.2019. Needless to say that during the weeks and months preceding the launching, I had no time to have writer’s block . There is no block when you have a deadline blinking on your screen.

When you finish, you take out the goat from the room — and look for a new one.

Repeating what I wrote at the very beginning of this article: to write a valuable book, fiction or non-fiction, takes time. It demands work. If any website or internet guru says the opposite, either they are misguided or they are talking about low-content brochures.

In my case, I count, between writing and editing time, 40 minutes per page. This means that a 200-page book will consume close to 135 hours of my time.

Volunteer for such a demanding task is respectable. When you begin it, you are placing a goat inside your room.

Wait, what?

Sorry, I forgot to explain the Brazilian fable of the goat inside the room, in case you are not familiar with it.

The Goat Inside the Room.

A long time ago, a father of a family with serious difficulties, living in a tiny house with many children, went to ask for the help of the village priest. After hearing his drama, the priest gave him a goat with the recommendation that, for a week, the man keep the animal in his room. After this period, the poor man should then return to the church. A week later, the man returned. The priest asked: And then? Have things improved? - No, priest. It hasn’t improved… The goat is dirtying the floor, waking up the kids, occupying a lot of space, stealing our meager food suppliers… - So, return the goat and come back in a week. Said the priest. The man returned the goat and a week later he returned. Again the priest asked: So? Have things improved? - Now, your priest, my life has never been so wonderful. Without the goat, we have space in the room and we no longer have that bad smell. And there the happy man went back to his home, thanking God for his new life.

When you have a full-time job or a company to manage, finding time for writing hundreds of pages will demand an organized routine. Some people wake up earlier, others go to sleep late.

Once you finish writing your book, this extra time created will be there, free, shining for you.

You will ask yourself What can I do now?

You took the goat from the room. That is when good ideas pop up.

Bite-sized knowledge
to upgrade
your career

How Writing a Book Revolutionizes the Speed You Manage Your Business

Pros of writing a manuscript

Other benefits, often neglected, from writing

Lack of urgency

IDEAS ABOUT

MORE LIKE THIS

Four steps that make writing less overwhelming

10 Simple Ways to Improve Your Business Writing Skills

How to Stop Sabotaging Your Writing Efforts | VelocityWriting.com

It's time to

READ

LIKE

A PRO!

Bite-sized knowledgeto upgradeyour career

How Writing a Book Revolutionizes the Speed You Manage Your Business

Pros of writing a manuscript

Other benefits, often neglected, from writing

Lack of urgency

IDEAS ABOUT

MORE LIKE THIS

Four steps that make writing less overwhelming

10 Simple Ways to Improve Your Business Writing Skills

How to Stop Sabotaging Your Writing Efforts | VelocityWriting.com

It's time to

READ

LIKE

A PRO!

Bite-sized knowledge
to upgrade
your career