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Book Review: You Are a Writer (So Start Acting like One) by Jeff Goins

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You Are a Writer is a book about what it takes to be a writer in the 21st Century. Author Jeff Goins shares his own story of self-doubt and what it took for him to become a professional. He gives you practical tips for freelancing, how to get published in magazines, and what it takes to build a platform that brings the gatekeepers to you.” (synopsis from Amazon)

You can get this book for free on Amazon until the end of the day today. And you might as well, it’s readable, informative, and motivating (sort of).

Will this book change your life? Probably not.

Does this book provide shocking revelations or writing tips not found elsewhere? No.

But Jeff Goins is upfront about this. The preface clearly states that everything in the book can be found somewhere on the internet. But why look? He has pulled together some great tips and provides a few anecdotes about lessons he learned the hard way.

You are a Writer is definitely for novices, for those writers unsure where to begin, are afraid to start, who wonder if they can even rightfully call themselves writers. Goins assertion? If you write, you are a writer. He wants you to say you are a writer even if you think you haven’t earned it yet. If you don’t believe you are a writer who else will?

You Are a Writer also covers the basics of:

-Building a platform to share your writing (using blogs, YouTube, podcasting, etc.)

-Creating a brand that is recognizable and trust worthy (choosing the right name, iconography, and voice for your writing “brand”)

-Developing channels to distribute your work (how to use marketing and social media to promote your writing).

The final section of the book discusses how to properly query and pitch editors and publishers to get paid writing gigs in magazines or other publications (I assume both on and offline). He has some solid basic information here, including sample query letters. But this part of the book felt odd to me, like I was suddenly reading something else. I can’t figure out why he went into old school publishing basics like query letters and pitches while I was reading a very “of the moment”, self-published eBook on my Kindle. The last part of this book would have been better spent teaching his readers how to self-publish and sell relevant content to the audiences they develop during the platform building, branding, and connecting lessons he shared in earlier parts of the book.

The tips on how to get published made me wonder if Goins secretly believes real writers must be traditionally published to validate their claim to the title “writer”.

So now I have to ask, do you think traditional publication would make you a more legitimate writer or is blogging and self-publishing enough?

PDFSQDUZAJES



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