How My Lawyer Became an Author and You Can Too
There once was a time when I was fascinated by celebrities.
Of course, that was well before the onset of the perpetual pop culture environment we live in today. But still, notable people are interesting. I’ve been especially taken with authors and poets. There’s an air of authority with people who do a good job shaping words into pictures, ideas, dreams…
That’s the reason I met and hired Harvey, my new attorney, because he’s written a book. I figured if I needed to be represented on a sticky little matter of delinquent taxes, I might as well be represented by an authority. Harvey’s written a short book on negotiating with various taxing authorities so I gather he must be an expert. As it turns out, he’s really good at what he does.
I got fairly close to Harvey the lawyer as we worked on my legal issues. And since I’ve always been curious about writers I asked him how he came to write the book titled, How YOU Can Negotiate a Deeply Discounted Tax Settlement. But Harvey didn’t have much to say. He actually brushed off my question with a casual answer that went something like, not much to it.
I guess some people are shy.
Well, Harvey was able to negotiate a deep discount for my tax liability and we’ve actually become fast friends. It seems we have quite a bit in common. I always fancied myself as a writer and thought it might be cool to hang out with someone who had written a published book.
But I found something out about my friend and attorney that at first was just a little disappointing. It seems that Harvey didn’t write How YOU Can Negotiate a Deeply Discounted Tax Settlement at all. It was actually ghost written by a professional writer. I asked Harvey what was up with all of that and he explained it to me. It didn’t make me feel a whole lot better but at least I understand where he’s coming from now.
Harvey explained to me that it isn’t enough to just be a good or even great attorney because there’s fierce competition in the field.
He says that successful attorneys and others in general need something distinctive that allows them to stand above a crowded competitive field. There are many ways to achieve this and writing a book was one that appealed to him. The only problem is, Harvey claims to be a terrible writer. I tend to doubt that but I do understand his point.
So how does an attorney who is a terrible writer become a locally famous author?
Harvey told me that he’d been a fan of talk radio as well as many of the TV talk shows for years. Like me, he’s always been fond of author interviews. That’s when he got the idea to write his book. But he didn’t feel he had the writing talent to pull it off so he contacted a writer’s group that meets at the university and got one of the writers to write it for him. Harvey provided the outline and raw material for the text and the writer turned it into a free-flowing guide on beating certain tax problems. It was really very simple. Harvey paid the writer a flat fee which included editing and he literally owned the copyright complete with rights to claim authorship.
The book is only 90 pages so he paid a local printer to print up a thousand copies. He’s managed to get them into the local Barnes and Noble as well as several other retail outlets around town. Some of them even have little stickers on them proclaiming ‘Local Author’ and ‘Signed Copy.’ And of course he has them for sale at his office but he often just gives them away. Of course, each copy is loaded with Harvey’s contact information
Boy, was I disillusioned at first. I thought it was a lot of trouble to go through just to get a book into print but Harvey put me straight on that too. He says that he’s generated tens of thousands of dollars in fees as a result of having the book. When he asked me why I called him with my legal problem I had to blush. It was because he’d written the book. He made his point. But there’s actually another way to be published and that’s with an eBook. eBook simply stands for electronic book and most are easily downloadable from a simple Website. Harvey is working on another book dealing with other tax issues which he plans to offer on his site to people who subscribe to his monthly tax newsletter.
There are lots of advantages to writing a book. One is, it actually could become a hot title and earn the author a lot of notoriety and income. But for people in business, having a book in print lends a lot of prestige and credibility to the author. Harvey has actually been a guest on several consumer advocate-type radio shows where he’s discussed the material in his book and gotten tons of decent clients from the contacts he’s made. He’s told me that if his title was just a little more mainstream he’d be willing to sit at the Barnes and Noble and conduct a book signing. Again, for Harvey it’s about notoriety and recognition and the growth of his practice since he’s written the first book has been phenomenal.
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