It's easy to self publish through Barnes & Noble's PubIt!

Just we showed with our How To: ePublish Through Kindle Direct article, the modern self-publishing portals are no more complicated than setting up a Gmail account. There are a couple of small tricks, but we’re going to walk through it all step by step right here and now. So, if you’ve got a book you’ve been working but, for some reason you haven’t pulled the trigger on it yet, I hope this article shows you how easy it is to get your work out into the market.

Now, how about we get started? First, you need to register for an account. Head over to The PubIt! Website and follow these directions:

1. Create an account.

a. Enter valid email address
b. First and last name
c. Provide a strong password
d. Pick a security question
e. Provide the answer to that security question.

2. Provide Contact Information

a. First & Last Name
b. Street Mailing Address
c. City, State, Zip Code, Country
d. Phone # and/or Fax#

3. Say if you want a publisher listed when you sell your books (you can make up your own) and a website for that publisher.

4. PubIt! will confirm the mailing address.

5. Agree to the Terms and Conditions (you must scroll down to make that option clickable).

6. Enter Your Bank Account Information (so they can send you your earnings).

a. Bank Name, Routing Number, Account Number
b. Name of the Account. Company name on the account (if applicable)

7. Enter your Tax Information.

a. Select type of taxpayer (Individual, Corporation or Other)
b. Tax ID, can be SSN or EIN (your SSN if you select Individual)
c. Tax Address (if different than mailing address, otherwise select “Use My Mailing Address”)

8. Enter your Credit Card Information

a. Billing Address
b. Card Type (Visa, MC, AMEX, Discover, Diners Club, JB)
c. Card Number Number, Card holder’s Name, and Expiration Date

9. Confirm the information you’ve just given.

10. Good to Go!

Now that you’re registered with the PubIt! Service, it’s time to load up a book! You will need:

- Your book (Preferably in ePub format but PubIt! also accepts .doc, .docx, rtf, html, and .txt formats)
- Your book cover in .jpg file format (sized between 750px and 2000px each side)
- Your book description and author bio (best to write these ahead of time, they’ll require a lot of thought).

Here are the steps to get your book into the B&N Digital Store:
To get started you need to get to the right page on PubIt!’s website. In your Dashboard (where you arrive as soon as you log in), click the “Add a Title” Box.

1. The Add Title Screen shows the six steps to digitally publish your book through PubIt!. The first step is to fill out the Product Listing information. Here’s what you need to do:

a. Enter your book’s Title
b. Enter your list price (how much you want people to pay to buy your book). Not sure how to price it? There’s a royalty calculator function right there.
c. Enter the Publication date (when you want your book to go on sale).
d. Enter the Publisher (default is what you filled in during step 3 above).
e. Enter the Contributors (that’s you as Author) and any others who you want to credit (up to 5).

2. Next, upload your eBook. Use the browse button to find your ebook file on your computer. When you’ve selected it, click “Upload & Preview”. Remember, make sure its the right type of file and that it’s pre-formatted to your satisfaction. While PubIt! has a formatting option, it, like Kindle’s, can be difficult. Best to have your book already formatted and ready to go.

Preview it in the Nook emulator to make sure it all transferred correctly and, when you’re satisfied, move to the next step.

3. Upload your cover image. Just like the last step, use the browse function to find the right file on your computer, then click “Upload”. PubIt! recommends your file be in JPG format, no larger than 2MB and between 750-2000 pixels per side.

4. Enter some basic Metadata by answering the following questions:

a. Do you have an eBook specific ISBN? (you don’t need one for Nook)
b. Is this Nook Book part of a series? (If stand alone, say no. If part of a series, even the first in a planned series, say yes.)
c. Is this Nook Book available in print?
d. Is this title Public Domain? This is asking if your book is no longer protected by copyright. Most likely the answer for any new book is “No” it is not in the Public Domain.
e. What Age Group is this Nook Book most suited for? There’s a drop down menu so you can pick the most appropriate.
f. What language is your Nook Book written in? There’s a drop down menu for you to pick your language.
g. Where do you have the rights to make your Nook Book available for marketing, distribution, and sale? If you hold the copyright, you hold worldwide rights, so go ahead and check that. If you don’t have complete control of the copyright (you negotiated with some other publisher for foreign distribution, for example), then you’re going to have to verify this with the other parties.
h. Do you want DRM encryption for your Nook Book? That’s up to you, many people discuss the pros and cons of each.

5. Enter your Promotional and Informational Stuff. There’s a lot here, and all of it is very important. This information is what people will see when they look your book up in B&N’s Nook catalog.

a. Subject Categories. You can select a maximum of 5.
b. Keywords. You get a maximum of 100 characters, with keywords separated by commas.
c. Description. Talk about your book in 5000 characters!
d. Author Bio. Talk about yourself in 2500 characters!
e. Editorial Review. Already got a review of your book from someone who is not you? You’ve got 500 characters to put it here (5 review maximum).

This is truly where you sell your book. Give all of these elements a lot of thought. I’m not going to go over every strategy in detail, but if you’re looking for more on how to write these descriptions, I highly recommend reading Robin Sullivan’s articles on the topic: Picking the Right Categories, Book Titles, and Author Bios.

6. Put your book up for sale! Click “Save”, then check the box to confirm your information and click “Put On Sale”.

Congratulations! You are now a published author!

UWS Recommends blogging with WordPress

One of those clients recently posted an article about how blogging (or the lack of) had impacted his sales. This spawned a discussion in the comments about topics for blogging, how often to blog, etc. I gave a response, but then thought perhaps I should address this issue a little more formally.

I’m not going to talk about how to write blog articles. There are tons of sites out there that do a much better job of that than I will. For those interested, I recommend Copyblogger and Grokdotcom for starters. What I want to talk about is why you should blog, what it does, and how it improves your sales.

You can blog for all kinds of reasons. Some do it for purely personal reasons with no intention of financial gain. Others do so specifically for financial gain, and the strategy behind that is what I’m going to talk about.

Why Blog

Blogging does a number of things. It brings in new leads, it builds a rapport with your target audience, and it provides a platform for your product. It’s usually comprised of mid-size to long articles between 500 and 1,000 words — but certainly not limited to that. Author John Scalzi is known for a lot of quick posts highlighting pics, quotes or external articles on his blog. It’s driven mostly by what kind of writer you are and what topic you’re writing about.

After an article is written and posted, a lot of things start happening. Search engine crawlers pick it up and analyze it. It goes out on RSS to your existing readers. If you have social networking share buttons (every blog should have these!), they get clicked on and your content starts to make it’s way across the social web. Through these methods, it percolates out through the web and beckons readers — new and old — to come and read it.

To read it, they come to your website. That’s what you want. On the web, the website is the key. Think of the website as your storefront and the bog article as the flyer/coupon that brought someone inside. Once they’re there, you want them to do something. Doesn’t matter if it’s to buy your book, sign up for your newsletter, or click on an affiliate link — you need them to do something. We call this a “call to action.”

How your website is designed will help you with your “action.” There are a number of design oriented topics that we can dive into here, but we’ll save that for another post. The key takeaway here is you need to get people to your website. That is your home turf. That is the purpose of your blog.

What Blogging Does

Blogs are superior to tweets and Facebook posts because they have more length and greater searchable content. When you post something through twitter, it’s fast — for many, it’s too fast. If you follow more than a dozen people, it’s easy to miss things on twitter — especially is some of those you follow are prolific tweeters. Same for Facebook — I doubt if I see a tenth of the posts on my Wall from the hundreds of people I’m friends with. But a blog is more static. I rarely miss a post from the sites that I follow.

The searchable part is the real key to understanding what blogging does for your business because that’s how you bring in new readers. Here’s a couple of examples:

One project I’m working on is a comic book focused on military fiction. As it’s graphical, it’s hard for search engines to grasp (not enough text to analyze). To make things easier on my readers, I put up a page outlining all of the military ranks of the four branches of service. That page of ranks is, by far, my most viewed page as far as new visits to the site are concerned. It quickly made the first page of Google search results and I get hundreds of hits a day from it. About 10% convert and read the rest of the site. That’s not too bad by most standards. Another huge draw for another site was a review I did for reading comics on the Nook Color — it was number one for “Comics on Nook Color” in Google and, again, got me hundreds of hits a day with about 10% converting.

Its the ability for search engines to allow new readers — readers who have never heard of you and may have never even been looking for you in the first place — to find you that demonstrates the purpose, and power, of blogging. Of course, once you’re found, the quality of your content and the layout of your site will dictate your conversion rate (aka how many sales you make). But the key is to get discovered, and in a world of billions of web pages, you need to use every trick you can to break out.

Improving Sales

Would you rather buy something from a stranger or from a friend?

Most people prefer to buy things from people they know and trust. In the wide web, how do you get to know someone? By reading what they write. What has a greater ability to convey a meaningful position: a 140 character tweet, a 50 word Facebook post, or a 1,000 word article?

I’m pretty sure you know the answer to that one.

In addition to bringing in new readers through search and sharing, blog articles convey a sense of the person writing them. Are you knowledgeable? Are you honest? Are you funny? Are you a good writer? Add in the ability to respond to commenters and your potential to create a rapport with your readers expands tremendously. Blogging allow you to intimately engage with your readers — and you’ll be surprised how far that goes in terms of sales.

The Wrap Up

So there you go — you use your blog to get people to your website so you can sell them stuff. You do that by writing solid articles about topics that interest you, ensuring those articles have good SEO (search engine optimization), and by encouraging and engaging commenters.

If you want to learn more about effective blogging, I honestly recommend the “Internet Marketing for Smart People” course from Copyblogger. It’s a 20 part free course that comes to you through email. It’s worth your time. I also recommend the Shoe Money Course, also free (it looks cheesy, but it’s actually pretty good for beginners). These are good resources. Some other resources that don’t require joining a newsletter is Duct Tape Marketing by John Jantsh, and People Buy You by Jeb Blount.

A fantastic Outlining Tool!

A Few Details

If you’ve never heard of it before, WorkFlowy is a free, web based outlining tool that takes advantage of the broad capabilities of HTML5, the latest internet language standard. It is an amazingly simple (some would say “stripped down”) writing application that is laser focused on one thing: outlines. The result is a simple, fast, and eerily powerful tool for organizing your thoughts.

Because it is a web application, it works on all platforms: PC, Mac, Linux, iPhone, iPad, Android, Honeycomb, Blackberry — you name it. Whether you use a mouse or a touchscreen, your outline is always available and will automatically sync across everything. It is the premier “cloud” outlining tool. In other words, if you have a web browser, you can be a super-powered WorkFlowy writing wizard!

An Example

Say you’re out and about and an idea strikes. You immediately whip out your smart phone, go to WorkFlowy, and jot it down. When you get home later that day, you fire up the laptop and get into the details. Pretty soon that chapter that hasn’t been cooperating is now flushed out and ready to rock. Want to share your outline? No problem! You can export it as a PDF or grant someone viewing and/or editing rights via email.

It doesn’t matter if you’re outlining your next novel, planning a birthday party, or jotting down your grocery list, WorkFlowy makes it easy to get your ideas down and organized quickly. The process is designed to be mind numbingly simple and intuitive — just type. Similar to powerpoint, when you want to create a sub-bullet, you simply hit the Tab key and keep typing. Make a mistake and want that sub-bullet to be a full bullet? Go back to the beginning of the line and hit the back key. Using a mobile device? All you do is type away with the in screen keyboard and, when you want to enact an action (indent, share, etc), tap the screen once and the action menu pops up. The entire process is amazingly easy and lightning fast. By stripping down the app, the WorkFlowy team has removed a majority of the impediments to recording your thoughts and reduced the limit to the single variable of how fast you can type.

How You Can Get It

WorkFlowy Mobile Icon

Whether writing a short story, novel, blog post or grocery list, you’ll be amazed at the benefits of using Workflowy to map out your plan. Best of all, it’s completely free. Check it out and get writing!

What are they up to?

I feel pretty confident when I say that B&N is NOT manipulating data.

They are excluding it.

The reason there are no Indie/PubIt! authors on the B&N Top 100 is because those PubIt! titles are categorically excluded from that ranking. Instead of grouping all books together, a’la Kindle, B&N broke them out and gave PubIt! authors an entirely separate list, the PubIt! Best Sellers list.

A Smart Move?

Amazon’s Kindle store treats all authors and titles as equal, and their best seller list reflects that. They make no judgments and have no deals with anyone. Kindle is, currently, the closest the book world will ever get to a 100% free market. Obviously, Indie authors prefer this, as it gives their books an honest chance to break out — and, to anyone following ebooks the last 10 months, there are have been some significant breakouts (and I’m not just talking about Amanda Hocking).

But what’s good for Indies may not be good for distributors. The mainstream reader is, as a whole, a lot more interested in their favorite “name brand” authors than they are in sifting through the Indie unknown. More and more are experimenting with cheap Indie titles, but the key word here is “experimenting.” Judging from reader reviews, there are many who have regretted those experiments (even the 99 cent ones). I’m not slighting those Indie authors who ARE breaking out and selling well, gathering an audience and building a brand. What I’m saying is that thousands of Indie books are being uploaded a day right now, and a majority are not at the level of quality most readers are used to. It’s still pretty wild out there and a number of readers are not interested in testing those waters, no matter the cost of entry. It’s safe to say that a majority of readers in the current market are much more inclined to read authors backed by the larger publishing houses.

The other half of this equation is profit margin. The higher the purchase cost, the larger the share to the distributor. Pushing readers towards higher priced, and higher demanded, books is good for the bottom line. The question is: will the “big name best seller” strategy be good for the long term? A lot of the appeal (and revenue) of Netflix is it’s “long tail”. As eBooks evolve, will best sellers continue to be the moneymaker, or will it be the accumulation of long tail sales? And how will digital booksellers facilitate the breakout books in that tail?

The Long Haul

The future of digital publishing is still in an amazing amount of flux. Where Amazon’s “everyone is equal” stance is pushing the progressive end of the spectrum, B&N is taking the more cautious approach. Given their respective financial positions, it’s little surprise.

In all honesty, I’m just happy that the “big two” both have an easy, low cost method for any author to upload their book. Compared to the others (Yes, I’m looking at you Kobo, Sony, and Apple!), this is a revolutionary step.

The hard reality to Indies is that the literary world, like nearly everything else, is still largely “brand” driven. Many players — publishers, distributors, book sellers, and even customers — are heavily invested in the status quo, and they are in no hurry whatsoever to change. Readers like the reliability of their favorite authors and everyone on the supply side loves the money. Giving customers what they want at an elevated price is good business.

The issue is that no one knows how long this will continue. What makes money today may not make money tomorrow. Just ask R.I.M — or should I say R.I.P.?

Amazon is betting on the free market — not a bad bet to take. B&N has decades of sales trends data and customer understanding at the retail level, they know what their customers want and believe in giving it to them. It’s obvious, B&N feels history will continue to repeat itself for a while longer. But, let me remind you, B&N was quick to switch to digital, a move that probably saved their company. They will switch again in a heartbeat and a few lines of code if they feel they need to. I’m sure when the Nook store’s search results indicate a change is warranted, they will do what they have to to keep their company solvent. They’ve made a lot of money over the years selling books, they’re going to give the market what it wants. Right now, it’s big publisher books. Tomorrow, maybe something else.

The Sleeping Dragon

The real question in my mind is not B&N’s selling practices. They are certainly not the only ones following the brand philosophy (*Cough* NYT! *Cough*) when it comes to tracking books. The question I have is whether Amazon will continue its current practices when they become publishers themselves? Amazon is making alliances and signing authors — and, at least for some Indies, the royalty Amazon the Publisher has offered hasn’t been as good as those from Amazon the Distributor. Are they going to curate their bookstore in the future? Are they going to alter their rates on lower priced books? Or will they do nothing, and we all continue happily along? I don’t know — but they sure do hold a lot of cards right now.

Given the fluidity of the market, and the uncertainty of the future, the best thing for Indie authors to do is what the more successful have been doing: write the best book you can, provide quality covers and formatting, sell through multiple outlets, and market like there’s no tomorrow. As the book world continues to shift and adjust, this strategy still proveds the best position however the wind blows.

The Amazon Kindle

Getting your book onto Amazon’s Kindle is ridiculously easy.

All it requires is signing up for the service and uploading your files (ensure they are properly formatted!). If you have your information in place, the entire process will take approximately 15 minutes — no, I’m not kidding.

You will need:

1) An Amazon Account

2) Your tax information (SSN unless you wish to use a dedicated Tax ID Number)

3) Your bank information (name, routing number, account number) if you want the option to have your payments electronically transferred to your bank account.

4) Your book’s cover art (500×1280 pixels at 72dpi density in .jpg or .tiff format)

5) Your book (advise submitting as a pre-formatted .mobi or .epub file, though there are methods to format through KDE)

Got all of those items and information together? Great! Let’s get started!

Register for an Account

If you haven’t already done so, you need to register with Kindle Direct, so let’s get that taken care of.

1. Go to http://kdp.amazon.com

2. Enter your Amazon Account ID. If you don’t have one, you need to sign up for one here: https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/signin/ap

3. Fill out your publisher account information, including:

a. Name (can be your company name, if you have set up a publishing company)

b. Address (Street, City, State, Zip)

c. Phone Number

4. Enter your Tax Information.

a. Tax Reporting Name (either your full name or the name of your registered company)

b. Business Type (Individual, Partnership, Corporation)

c. Taxpayer Number (SSN, TIN, or EIN)

5. Set the terms of Royalty Payments for each branch of Amazon: US, UK, and DE. This means you have to tell Amazon if you want to be paid via check or direct deposit, and in what currency you want to be paid. If you chose an electronic transfer, you need to enter your bank account information at this time.

And that’s it! You are now registered to sell through Kindle. Time to publish your book!

Upload Your Book

Just as with registration, this process can be very easy. Where you would get into trouble is if you don’t have your books pre-formatted and you try to format through Kindle Direct itself. The formatting process is far from impossible, but it will take several days of tweaking for the uninitiated. We recommend having your book professionally formatted ahead of time, then you can just upload it in a few seconds.

Here are the steps to get your eBook into the Kindle Store:

1. Go to My Bookshelf.

2. Enter your book’s Title.

3. If your book is part of a series, enter the series information (series title and what volume this book is in the series).

4. Enter the Edition Number (If this is the first time your book has been published, it’s a 1st Edition).

5. Enter Your Book Description. Take This Step Seriously! The book description is what buyers will see when they click on your book. You have 4,000 characters to make this sale, use them wisely. We recommend you go through several drafts and a lot of test readers before you enter this information. You can always come back and change it, but you want it to be pretty darn good from the get go.

6. Add the Misc Information (Your Name as the author, any other contributors, publication date, publisher, and, if you prefer, an ISBN).

7. Verify that you own the rights to the work.

8. Target Your Customers. Here you enter the search categories you book will appear in (sci-fi, romance, fiction, non-fiction, etc). You can select two categories. You also enter in your Keywords at this time. You can select seven keywords. Give these some thought, as you want readers to find your book through sensible search.

9. Upload your Book Cover.

10. Upload your Book File.

11. Verify your publishing territories (worldwide or specific areas).

12. Set your Royalty Rate. This is either 35% (priced below $2.99) or 70% (priced between $2.99 and $9.99).

13. Enter your exact sales price.

14. Enter if you want to allow book lending.

15. Acknowledge terms and Click “Save and Publish”.

Congratulations! You are now a published author!

As you can see, self publishing through Kindle is about as easy as signing up and using Gmail. If you’re thinking of writing a book, or you have one already written, and the idea of “self publishing” sounds overly difficult, I hope this “How-To” convinces you otherwise.

You can do this.  Good Luck!

Want to Jump Start Your Novel? Try a Writing Challenge!

SOCNOC

The Southern Cross Novel Challenge, or SoCNoC (pronounced “sock-nock”), was created by the good people in New Zealand as a version of NaNoWriMo a little better scheduled for the Southern Hemisphere. It is organized by the KiwiWriters.org and occurs in June. Why June? It’s got 30 days and it occurs at an equivalent time and season as November in the Northern Hemisphere (just to make it all kind of even). The rules are pretty much the same as NaNoWriMo, with one significant difference: There is a Half!

That’s right, a half-novel option of 25,000 words. Just like many marathons these days have a half option, SocNoc gives those writers with crazy schedules a way to achieve total victory that is a little more realistic. Oh, there’s still the full novel option of 50,000 words, but the shorter version is, I think, a nice nod to those with a lot (too many?) of commitments.

The Rules

As with NaNoWriMo, contestants in SoCNoC have 30 days to complete their task. While the rules are extremely similar to NaNoWriMo, there are a couple of tweaks. From the KiwiWriters.org website:

The goal is to write 50,000 words of fiction.

Generally the rules of NaNoWriMo apply but we’re a bit more flexible:
- the 50,000 words does not have to be on one novel
- you can work on an existing novel or multiple novels
- you can work on a compilation of short stories or even poems

However, for the best SoCNoC experience possible we recommend:
- you start a new novel on June 1st
- you aim to finish your novel at 50,000 words
- you aim to finish your novel by midnight on June 30th

Last, but not least, we ask that you log your word count no matter how close or how far you are from the 50,000 word goal. Every word counts towards our collective total!

You can register for SoCNoC HERE! Good Luck!

More trouble than it's worth?

At the start of every journey, there is a little hiccup.

You know, a tiny thing that pops up and, all of a sudden, triggers a procrastination effect which cascades into a full stop. If you have young children, that hiccup might take the form of an unexpected run for the potty or a daughter who refuses to wear anything except her pink bunny slippers to go out into the winter snow. If you’re a writer, it’s all of those little technical issues that just seem so daunting.

Like getting an ISBN.

A Little Background

What is an ISBN? The acronym ISBN stands for International Standard Book Number. It’s purpose is to provide a unique identifier for each and every book. Why? well, to make it all simpler to find and order. Incredibly, circumstances do arise where authors with similar names write books with similar titles. An ISBN allows each to be uniquely identifiable. It’s assigned to each edition, and variation, of a book. ISBN’s are only for books, magazines use a different numerical system called the International Standard Serial Number (ISSN).

To get an ISBN, you need to buy one (or get one from a publisher). You can only buy them from your nation’s authorized provider, in the US that’s R. R. Bowker. They are sold in singles or in batches, with prices starting at $125.00. You can buy ten ISBN numbers for $250, so that’s a significant savings.

Bottom Line: You only need to buy one if you are selling through iBooks or the Sony Bookstore.

It’s all because of tracking

Barnes&Noble/PubIt, Google eBookstore and Amazon Kindle provide their own unique identifiers for any ebook they sell. If you want to put an ISBN on that book, you can, but it is not necessary. Apple and Sony do not provide indexing services for their books, so you have to. The way you do that is through an ISBN. Will this ever change? Probably not, but stranger things have happened.

If you want to put out a print version, it will need an ISBN. That ISBN must be different from the eBook ISBN (unique ISBN for each edition, remember?). It can add up.

Getting the Most for Your Money

You can reduce this up front cost significantly by using Smashwords, CreateSpace, Lulu, or other similar services. BUT, before you do, think about the real cost. Kindle is 70% of the ebook market. Nook is 25%. iBooks and Google are growing and almost nobody mentions Sony anymore. Indie authors are reporting their digital sales are over 100 times more than their print versions. Most of them say they only have print copies for signature editions and gifts. So, before you make a decision on this, do a quick look at the economics:

Smashwords takes 10% of your profit and keeps control of your digitally converted files. An ISBN costs 450 copies when equated to 10% of $2.99. If you think you will sell more than 450 copies though Apple’s iBooks, buy your own ISBN and submit it yourself. If you just want to go where 95% of the market is (for no cost to submit, I might add), stick with Nook and Kindle and forgo the ISBN.

As for print? If you only plan to use those print editions for gifts and special copies, just use a local print shop or a vanity press like Blurb and save yourself the cost and heartache.

What makes an expert? Knowledge? Experience? Or acceptance?

Daniel, a master glassblower with 35 years of experience.

There are a lot of experts in our daily lives. We see their books on the shelves, hear their voices on radio and see their faces on TV. But what is it that made them experts?

In an attempt to answer that question, here’s a quick case study of three experts, all from the financial arena.

Who Are “The Experts”?

Suze Orman is an expert. She’s written 7 books, hosts a radio and a TV show, won awards, and been on Oprah.  BUT, she is not a financial expert by education. Her degree is, actually, in Social Work not Finance.  She does not have an MBA.  She is not a CPA.  As a matter of fact, the extent of her financial education credentials is the Merrill Lynch training class.  She traded for Lynch, then was a VP at Prudential Bache until 1997, when she started writing financial self-help books primarily for women.

Jim Cramer gradauted Magna Cum Laude from Harvard with a degree in Government.  Later he graduated from Harvard Law school and passed the NY Bar Exam. He does not have an education or any professional certifications in finance.  He did trade stocks and commodities, with a very solid record, for Goldman Sachs and later left to form his own fund which also did extremely well. He formed a company, TheStreet.com, which provides investor services and information. He’s been the host of Mad Money since 2005. He’s written six books, all bestsellers.

Robert Kiyosaki graduated from the Merchant Marine Academy as a deck officer in 1969, and later served in the USMC during Vietnam as a gunship pilot. Most know him from his books — he’s written over a dozen books on finance in the RichDad series. He has no business education or certifications, spurns them in fact, and prefers to learn from life. He formed two businesses: one in velcro wallets, the other in heavy metal t-shirts, before starting the RichDad franchise that made him famous.

Nathan Sawaya, a man who is passionate about LEGOs.

All three of these people are “experts” in the field of finance. Not one has a degree in business, finance, economics or management.  Not one has an MBA. Not one has a CPA. Only one, Jim Cramer, found true financial success before writing financial self-help books. All three have found tremendous success giving advice as a “financial expert”. And what is their advice, exactly? A combination of common sense, basic finance, and an underlying message of personal responsibility for our own  financial health.

In other words, for many of us, the stuff our parents told us that we never listened to. Which is exactly what I’m getting at.

There is no single bestowing authority of expertise in any subject.  There isn’t!  Education doesn’t provide one an expert label.  Experience is no golden ticket to professional acceptance.  It is acceptance by our peers that is the final arbiter of the title “Expert”.  And what is the first step of professional acceptance?  Writing a book. Not a blog.  Not an article.  A book.

A book has meaning.  A book has gravitas.  A book reaches deep into our collective psyche and screams “Wow, that person really knows their stuff!”  It doesn’t have to be deep or world changing.  Often, the most successful simply present basic ideas.

Above are three people who’s passion for the subject of finance, not education or professional certification, brought them success.  For two, at least, the main vehicle of their success was books.

A Call To Action

If this blog post does anything, I hope it leaves you with these two concepts:

1.  You don’t need a special degree, angels from heaven, or a glance from Oprah to be knowledgeable about a topic that fascinates you.

2.  The knowledge you possess has value.

Every one of us has accumulated a lifetime of knowledge and experience. Each one of us is passionate about something.  And, chances are, whatever you’re interested in, someone else is, too.

Digital publishing combines the information democracy of blogs with the old school methodology of paying for a product.  Books are no longer hidden behind the stronghold of publishing companies — services like Kindle and PubIt! allow anyone to share their thoughts with the world through digital eBooks.  A whole new breed of everyday experts are flourishing as more and more people are willing to pay for the insight and advice of their passionate peers.

So what are you waiting for? Close this web browser, open up that word processor, and ask yourself:  ”What is my area of expertise?”  Write your book, upload it yourself (for free!) and charge $2.99 a download.  Maybe you’ll make a little money.  Maybe you’ll make a lot.  But no matter what, you’ll be able to say “I wrote the book.”