2025 is almost over.
You said you’d write it this year. You didn’t.
You said the same thing in 2024. And 2023. And probably 2022.
Laziness has nothing to do with it: the business comes first, and there’s always something more urgent than sitting down and getting your story on paper.
So another year passes. Your expertise stays locked in your head. Your competitors publish books and land speaking gigs. Your story waits.
Nobody tells you this: there’s never a good time. There’s only now or never.
The executives who have books didn’t find extra time. They made a decision and got help, and they stopped treating the book like a someday project and started treating it like a business asset.
2026 can be different. Or it can be another year of “I really should write that book.”
The Excuse List
Every excuse on this list is real, and I don’t dismiss any of them. The cost is what hurts. Each year the book stays in your head is another year it isn’t bringing you clients, speaking invitations, or the credibility you’ve already earned and never put on paper.
There’s never a good time to write your book. That’s exactly why it never gets written.Share on X
I’ve heard them all.
“I don’t have time.” You have the same 24 hours as every other executive who published a book. The difference is priority. You make time for what matters. If your book mattered enough, you’d find two hours a week. You haven’t. That’s a decision problem.
“I’m not a writer.” Neither were most of the executives, coaches, and entrepreneurs who have books on shelves right now. They had ideas, expertise, and stories. Someone helped them turn those into books. Writing skill is the easiest part of this equation to solve.
“I don’t know where to start.” That’s a solvable problem. You start with your story. What you learned. What you built. What you’d tell your younger self. The structure comes after. The polish comes after. The starting point is just talking about what you know.
“Nobody would want to read it.” Your clients pay for your expertise. Your employees learn from your experience. Your competitors study what you’ve built. But somehow nobody would want to read your book? That’s fear talking.
“I’ll do it when things slow down.”
Things won’t slow down. You know this. You’ve been in business long enough to know that there’s always another quarter, another launch, another crisis. If you wait for slow, you’ll wait forever.
“I tried and got stuck.”
Getting stuck isn’t failure. Quitting is failure. Most books die in chapter three because the writer didn’t have a system. A structure. A process to push through when the initial excitement fades. That’s fixable.
What Does a Book Do for You?
I’ve seen what a finished book does for the people I write for. Books of mine have turned into consulting contracts, speaking engagements, courses and, for one client, a promotion. A manuscript that never gets written does none of that.
Forget legacy for a second. Let’s talk business.
Authority positioning.
Two consultants pitch the same client. One has a book. One doesn’t. Who seems more credible? The book doesn’t have to be a bestseller. It just has to exist. Published authors operate in a different category than everyone else in your space.
Lead generation that doesn’t stop.
A book works while you sleep. While you’re on vacation. While you’re in meetings. Someone discovers it, reads it, and reaches out. No ad spend. No sales calls. Just inbound from people who already trust you because they’ve spent hours inside your thinking.
Speaking opportunities.
Event organizers Google potential speakers. A book is proof you have something to say. It’s the fastest path from “who’s this guy?” to “let’s book him for the keynote.” Most speakers with full calendars have books. Most speakers with empty calendars don’t.
Higher fees.
Consultants with books charge more. Coaches with books charge more. It’s not about the book itself. It’s about the perceived expertise the book signals. Same work, higher rates. Because you wrote the book on it. Literally.
Client conversion.
Send a prospect your book before the sales call. They show up pre-sold. They’ve already spent hours with your ideas. The conversation shifts from “convince me” to “how do we work together?” That’s a different negotiation entirely.
Recruiting.
Top talent wants to work for leaders who are going somewhere. A book signals vision, expertise, thought leadership. It differentiates you from every other company trying to hire the same people.
The Numbers Nobody Runs
Run the numbers on time. The fastest book I’ve written was an 80,000-word communications book, finished in three months by someone who does this for a living. An executive fitting a book into spare weekends is looking at a far longer road, and spare weekends have a habit of disappearing.
Average executive career: 40 years.
Average retirement: 20 years. Maybe.
Average time your expertise stays relevant after you stop working: 5 years. Maybe less. Then it’s outdated or forgotten.
Your revenue numbers won’t outlive you. Your quarterly wins won’t make it into your obituary. Your org charts will be restructured six months after you leave.
A book outlives all of it.
Not because books are magic. Because ideas on paper compound in ways that ideas in your head don’t. They get shared. Referenced. Built upon. They reach people you’ll never meet, solving problems you didn’t know they had.
But only if you write them down.
Your expertise has an expiration date. A book extends it. Indefinitely.
Why Do People Get Stuck Writing a Book?
Many of the people who hire me open the first call by apologizing for their writing or telling me flat out that they can’t write. I tell them that’s why people hire a ghostwriter. Being stuck on the page says nothing about whether your story deserves a book.
The executives who try to write books and fail usually fail for predictable reasons. For more on quiet authority and influence, see this profile of Kathy Warden.
They start without a structure.
They open a document and start typing. Stream of consciousness. By chapter three, they’re lost. The book has no spine, no throughline, no reason to keep reading. They get stuck because they built without a blueprint.
They write like they’re writing.
Business books don’t need to sound like literature. They need to sound like you. Like you’re explaining something to a smart colleague over coffee. Most executives write stiff, formal prose that puts readers to sleep. Then they wonder why the book isn’t working.
They don’t protect the time. Writing happens in the cracks at first. Then the cracks fill up. Then months pass without progress. Then the project dies. The executives who finish books treat writing time like client meetings. Non-negotiable. On the calendar. Protected.
They edit while they draft.
First draft is for getting it down. Second draft is for making it good. Mixing the two is the fastest path to paralysis. Executives who edit every sentence never finish the chapter. Perfectionists don’t publish.
They work alone.
Writing is solitary. But finishing a book usually isn’t. The people who get books done have accountability. Deadlines. Someone waiting for pages. Someone asking questions. Someone pushing back when the excuses start.
Two Ways to Make 2026 Different
You’ve got two options.
How do you write your book yourself this year?
If you’re writing it yourself, use AI as a tool and keep it in that role. Treat it like a tool and you’ll do fine; let it do your work for you and you’ll have problems. My writing handbooks, more than 40 of them, use AI prompts to help writers build a stronger protagonist, plot and structure, and none of them hand the book over to a machine.
The Complete AI-Enhanced Memoir System is a step-by-step process from first idea to finished manuscript. Not theory. Not motivation. A structure that gets books done.
Four modules. From discovering your story to completing your draft. Each step builds on the last. No getting lost in chapter three. No staring at blank pages wondering what comes next.
This is for people who want to do the writing themselves but need a roadmap that works.
Should you have someone write your book for you?
If you hire someone, choose the person carefully. One client talked to more than a dozen ghostwriters before he hired me, and he said he chose me because I was the first who acted like a person and treated him like one. You’ll spend months with this writer, and the sales pitch won’t count for much by month three.
You don’t have time to write a book. You know this. That’s why you’ve been saying “next year” for five years.
But you do have time to talk about what you know. Your expertise. Your stories. Your ideas. The things you’ve spent decades learning.
I turn those conversations into books.
I’ve ghostwritten for executives, entrepreneurs, and coaches. My clients have used their books to raise over $30 million in venture capital. Land publishing deals. Build platforms that generate leads while they sleep.
If your book has been waiting for “someday,” let’s make someday January.
The Question for 2026
Decide this month whether you’ll write the book yourself or hire someone, and then start. Don’t let another year make that decision for you, because the story doesn’t improve sitting in a drawer and the opportunities it could have opened go to someone who finished.
A year from now, you’ll be looking at another December.
Either you’ll have a book. Or you’ll have another year of excuses.
Same time. Same opportunities. Different outcome. Based entirely on what you decide this week.
2026 is coming whether you’re ready or not.
What’s it going to be?
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