Write & Grow Rich: Using Voice-Recognition to Dictate Your How-To-Book (Paperback)

Dan Poynter has written and published over 74 books and over 500 magazine articles since 1969. He probably knows more about publishing and self-publishing than anyone else in the industry. So when I received his book Write & Grow Rich: Using Speech Recognition to Dictate Your How-to Book, I knew right away that I had to read, digest, and review it.

This book promises to tell you how to write a how-to book through speech recognition software and it does that. It is a little short on the speech recognition part, only one chapter is really devoted to that topic. But it is easy to overlook this for all the other useful information contained in these pages. So even though this will a little bit disappointing from the computer-user side of my personality, the writer in me was impressed!

The organizational side of the book helps you get all your material together in a logical format, one which will help the reader understand your point and ensure that your book gets reader recommendations and referral sales. Since books sell mostly by word-of-mouth anyway, this is good for the writer.

Tips include how to research topics, how to work through drafts, and laying out a cover which will get noticed on the shelves. Some of the information about the mainstream publishers is rather depressing, but it is true. This illustrates well the point that Mr. Poynter makes: think about self-publishing to maintain control and keep the book on shelves longer. Plus the profit could be much better!

Poynter challenges the reader to think about his or her use of time. Do you really want to sell your time working hourly? A product or book sells all the time, sometimes even while the author sleeps. Isn't that a better proposition for making a living?

This book includes helpful information about why a person would want to be an author, how to get over time constraints, every step of writing, outlining, titles, publishing strategies, and 19 pages of resources for writers (including many web addresses). Basically, Poynter destroys every excuse that I have heard writers utter and in over ten years of working with writers I have heard a lot of them! Poynter shows that the reason any writer doesn't get a book written is not the excuses, but their own unwillingness to overcome the excuses. An excellent insight!

I like Poynter's style, as he never tells the reader what to do, but gives suggestions, lays out the choices, and lets the reader make the decision.

Some of Dan Poynter's other great books: The Self-Publishing Manual (tenth edition) and Is There a Book Inside You? Both are published by Para Publishing.

Previously published online at the Common People Using Computers

Copyright 1998, Karl R. Witsman