Unfortunately, the most common answer to “when should I write my book?” is “later.”
People wait until the business settles down, until the kids are older, until they’ve retired, until they’ve figured out exactly what to say. Years pass. The idea stays in their head, and some of the people who could have helped tell it are gone.
A good book dying of “later” is a loss. Every year of waiting costs something specific: the launch it could have supported, the clients it could have brought in, the details that fade from the author’s memory. There are good times and bad times to write a book, and they’re easier to spot than people think.
When is a book most useful to a business?
Before the moment it has to serve. A book finished just before a fundraise, a product launch, a conference season or a job search does its work when it counts. One client of mine walked into investor meetings with a published book that laid out his vision and his market. Investors had read it before he arrived, and it helped him raise $30 million in venture capital. A Canadian tech entrepreneur used his book to land a TEDx talk and grow his business.
A book that arrives the month after the event is still valuable, but it has missed its best chance.
Hard deadlines are common in my work: a milestone birthday, a conference, a startup launch. I like them. A date on the calendar keeps both of us moving, and a client who knows what the book is for makes decisions faster than one who’s writing it for someday.
Is a career transition a good time to write a book?
Often the best time. A retirement, the sale of a company, a move from executive to consultant, a new career as a speaker: each is a point where you have decades of experience and a reason to package it. It’s also a point where your perspective is clear. You can see the whole arc of the career instead of standing in the middle of it.
Start before the new chapter swallows you. Once the consulting practice or the speaking calendar fills up, the clear view you had in the gap between roles starts to blur back into daily work, and the book that felt obvious becomes one more item on a list. I’d push anyone in a transition to begin while that view is still fresh.
Milestone birthdays work the same way, especially for memoirs. A seventieth or eightieth birthday gives a family book a natural deadline and a party to hand it out at.
Why shouldn’t you wait to write a family story?
Because the people who hold it won’t always be there. I interviewed my grandfather about the war when I was seventeen.
Within a few years Alzheimer’s began taking his memory, and he died in 1985. Without those conversations there would be no Behind the Wire. I’ve written memoirs for clients in their nineties who were sharp and full of detail, and for families working only from papers because they started too late.
If there’s a story in your family, record it now, even if the book comes years later. My article on interviewing an older relative explains how to start.
Families put this off because asking about the past can feel like telling someone they’re running out of time. Have the conversation anyway. A few awkward minutes at the kitchen table cost far less than the answers you’ll never get once the person is gone.
When is the wrong time to write a book?
In the middle of a crisis you haven’t finished living. People who are caring for a dying parent almost never write about it while it’s happening; the caregiving memoirs I’ve worked on were all written years later, when the writer could see what it meant. The same goes for a divorce in progress or a business in collapse. A book written from inside the fire tends to become a weapon or a diary. Wait until you can tell it with some balance, and the book will be better for it.
The other wrong time is when you don’t know what the book is for. “I should write a book” isn’t a reason yet, and I’d sooner talk a prospect out of starting than watch them spend months on a book with no job to do. Figure out who it’s for and what it should do for them, and the right time usually becomes obvious.
How much time do you need to have free?
Less than you’d think, if you work with a ghostwriter. Plan on a few hours a week of interviews for the first month or two, then time to read and respond to chapters as they arrive, over four to eight months in total. If you’re writing it yourself, multiply that many times over.
Being busy is the weakest reason to wait, because you’ll be just as busy next year. Protect one hour a week for the book the way you’d protect a standing meeting.
How do you set a target date for your book?
Work backward from the date that matters. Take the event, the launch or the birthday, subtract several weeks for editing, cover design and publishing, then four to eight months for the manuscript, and a few weeks for signing and the kickoff. If the answer is “we should have started last month,” start this month. If you need the book faster, a rush project is possible at a higher cost. My fastest book took three months for 80,000 words. My article on what happens week by week shows the calendar in detail.
What if you’re still not sure it’s the right time?
Test it before committing. The Book Discovery Intensive is ten hours of interviews that end with a book strategy, a publishing plan and a sample chapter. You’ll know what the book is, who it’s for and whether now is the moment.
If it is, my ghostwriting services take it from there. If you’re weighing whether you need a ghostwriter at all, start with the signs you need one.
Whatever you decide, decide it on purpose. A clear “not this year” with a reason behind it is fine by me. The outcome to avoid is a good story sitting in somebody’s head until the people who lived it are gone, because then the author loses the book, and so do the family, clients and readers who would have had it.
