Don’t Write a Book in 2026
My Best Advice to Want-to-Be-Authors
This title only sounds crazy if you know that I spend my life both writing books and coaching people who want to.
But because I do both and have for years, I have gotten far pickier about the books I find worth their salt, anymore.
Look on your night stand. Peruse Amazon for 5 minutes. We have enough books to circle the globe and then some, many of which should have probably never have seen the light of day.
Don’t misunderstand me. I want more people writing books. I just want them to be great.
So please do yourself and all of us a favor and don’t write a book in 2026 if…
You plan to mostly use chatGPT to do it. Besides the fact this is unethical, it’s also lazy. Use your God-given brain to give us something technology never will: heart and personal story.
You are still centering yourself in your work. This is a rookie writer move. Yes, your story matters, but readers only care about it so far as it helps them escape their own life or be helped by being seen, understood and motivated, themselves.
You are in it to make money. Writing isn’t a lucrative business, for the most part. Only a very slim margin of authors ever earn a decent living writing books.
You don’t plan to market it. By far, the widest gap in knowledge with new authors is the marketing game and understanding the massive role it plays in today’s publishing culture. Social media is important for brands. Cultivated email lists are critical. YouTube channels are nearly a dealbreaker. Substack audiences are pivotal to the process. It’s not just writing the book — it’s marketing it, as well. Yes, you must build a trusted audience. No, you can’t leave marketing out.
Your book is unclear. In every single case without fail — of all the folks I’ve coached in their book writing — every one has struggled in some way with lacking clarity. If it wasn’t the title it was the subtitle. If it wasn’t titling, it was articulating the reader’s felt need. If not the felt need, it was in the structure of the book, itself. Many books on the shelf, today, suffer from a lack of clarity — not giving the reader a clear mental pathway to follow in their reading. This ultimately leaves the reader dissatisfied and unwilling to pass the book on to friends, which leads to the book’s demise.
I would truly love to see some amazing books go out into the world in 2026.
Paying attention to these 5 things is a very good start.
PS: If you are interested in help with any of these or other things pertaining to writing a book, I’ve opened up a few more book coaching slots for 2026! Get more information HERE.