“Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty.” —Theodore Roosevelt

At least one person, and probably many more, want to learn what your book will teach them. You have an obligation to yourself and to your audience to stop editing and put the book out. Give your knowledge to them, even if it’s not perfect. They want and need it.

“Those who know that they are profound strive for clarity. Those who would like to seem profound to the crowd strive for obscurity.” —Nietzsche

What is book positioning? Simply stated, book positioning is the place your book occupies in the mind of your reader, and how that reader perceives your book as fulfilling their needs.

The reader absolutely does want to hear your story…but only the parts that are relevant to why they are reading your book.

Even if you feel you don’t have a brand-new perspective on the subject, if you have a unique voice and perspective around key concepts, tailored for your audience, and can curate old ideas in a new way, you will help them see old concepts in a way that finally clicks for them.

Also, opposition helps you find and galvanize your own audience of people, like Shannon did. If there are loud and angry people on only one side of a debate, it probably means the other side simply does not have a spokesperson. Your book puts you in that role.

Fear: “I’m afraid my book isn’t original enough.” Alternate Expressions of This Fear “I don’t think I have anything new to say.” “Everything I have to say is stuff everyone already knows.” “I’m afraid this has already been said.” “My book won’t be any different from other books on this topic.”

The fear of judgment is crippling to many authors, and prevents them from either writing their book, or from writing the book that they really want to write, or telling the stories they want to tell in their book. Here’s the simple fact about books: if no one at all disagrees with what you are saying, then you aren’t saying anything worth putting i