How can one study Botany?

There are millions of plants on our planet. How can one study them? It will take us several lifetimes to understand the differences between species.

Yet Botanists know most of these differences by heart. They have arranged the information so that it is easy to know where everything fits in the big picture. 

Botanists divided all plants into two major groups — non-vascular and vascular. The non-vascular group contains early plants with no vascular system, while the vascular plants have a well-developed vascular system. 

Then they further subdivided the groups. Non-vascular plants have two divisions— Bryophyta(Mosses), Marchantiophyta(Liverworts) and, vascular plants have four divisions — Pteridophyta (Ferns), Coniferophyta (Conifers), Ginkgophyta (Gingko), and Magnoliophyta (Flowering plants).

There you go—the entire plant kingdom can be explained in two paragraphs. Each division has further sub-divisions, classes, order, families, and genus, but all you need is a bird’s-eye view approach to understand Botany.

I am going to use the same approach to understand authorpreneurship. 


Throughout my journey as a writer, I approached everything with the vigor of a student. I wanted to write my memoir, but I didn’t know how to turn my boring anecdotes into stories. I learned it.

I wanted to write a novel but I didn’t know how to develop my idea into an outline. I learned it too.

I didn’t know how to start a blog, write articles, write for social media, sketch. But I learned them.

I learned it mostly from other people. People took the time and shared their knowledge and techniques through books, blogs, videos, and podcasts. 

Now, I am learning authorpreneurship. Although it is not science or skill, it is complex enough to demand full attention.

It is complex because it is new. 

There is no clear path, and there is no one path.

Yet, it is reproducible as several writers are successfully doing it. 

I am reading stories after stories of writers who are turning their writing into a thriving business. I intend to study them and learn from them.


The first person who intrigued me was Jesse Tevelow.

At the not-so-ripe age of 31, Jesse was fired from a start-up company. He had no plans for his future. Instead of looking for another job, Jesse followed his dream. He hunkered down in his one-bedroom apartment and started writing.

He had two #1 bestsellers on Amazon in less than eighteen months, and he was earning thousands of dollars per month in passive income.

Writing can be a viable side-gig, a powerful leveraging tool, and even a lucrative full-time pursuit. It can open doors you never knew existed. But perhaps more importantly, it can bring you more fulfillment than you’ve ever felt before. That’s exactly what it did for me. — Jesse Tevelow.

According to a New York Times article, four out of every five Americans feel the urge to write a book, yet very few of them actually write one. 

Why?

Because writing a book has historically been considered an arduous task. It is like climbing Everest. First, you have to write a greater story. Then you have to hire an agent. Then you have to score a publishing deal. And even if you somehow pull that off, it’ll take years before your book hits the shelves. Writing a book is not everyone’s game.

It was true about two decades ago. Everything has changed since. 

Jesse wrote his first book in six months, making countless mistakes along the way. He didn’t have a publisher or an editor, or a marketing team, yet he still published a #1 bestseller that generates a significant passive income. 

“The experience blew my mind, to put it lightly.” writes Jesse. “I couldn’t help but wonder, are other people seeing the same results?”

As he dug deeper, he found multiple examples of indie authors making five, six, and sometimes even seven figures from their self-published books and related companies. And then it hit him. 

We now live in a world that favors content creators over gatekeepers. — Jesse Tevelow.

Jesse now has a multi-million dollar business build around his books. He is the founder of LaunchTeam, a distributed network of go-to-market experts who help remarkable people launch remarkable things.

I bought all three of Jesse’s books — The Connection Algorithm, Authorpreneur: Build the Brand, Business, Lifestyle You Deserve It’s Time To Write Your Book, Hustle: The Life-Changing Magic of Constant Motion. It was the best $4.50 I ever spent. 

Here is what I learned from his books:

If you’re entrepreneurial and hard-working, you can use books to earn meaningful passive income, gain leverage as an expert in your field, build your legacy, grow a sustainable business, and enrich the world.

And you don’t need anyone’s permission.

You can do it. 

It might sound hyperbolic and crazy, but it’s true.

Now is the most favorable environment for writing books the world has ever seen.

There are two things to keep in mind:

  1. Technology and entrepreneurship have made books more powerful than ever before.

2. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel. There are several successful models available to follow.


Applying the bird’s-eye view approach to classify the models, I have found there are two major categories.

  1. Book Brand: This is where authors rely on producing multiple books in a popular genre targeting the same audience, using paid ads to drive traffic directly to the book sales page. It is usually part of the high production business model. Several fiction writers such as James Patterson, Joanna Penn come in this category. 
  2. Author Brand: This is about branding the author, and attracting the target market over time through content marketing, speaking, social media, and paid advertising. Authors find a niche and build an empire in that niche. Examples include Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg, Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki, The Universe Has Your Back by Gabrielle Berstein, or Rise of the Youpreneur by Chris Ducker. This design style also applies to biographies like Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson.

In my further articles, I will further explore these models.

Photo by Laura Chouette on Unsplash

1 Comment

  1. Margaret Smyth

    Interesting reading. So much to learn. Thanks Neera for sharing.

Comments are closed.

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