By Maren John Mafuyai

I write about family, speech and writing industry.


Michael Wolff is the first nonfiction author on the list in 11 years.
Photo: Ralf Juergens/Getty Images. Design: Nick DeSantis, Forbes Staff

One thing made Michael Wolff the highest paid author in 2018: what Donald trump told the world about his book, Fire and Fury.

And here's how we've learned it so far.

Should we say just write for may be one day someone like Donald trump would say something about it to make you the highest paid author on earth too? Or should we write against the president if we have a good reason? Ofcourse, both may work.

Let's start with the hard way. Now many writers create a blog specially to advertise their books to the larger audience. Within a short time, they become fed up and bored because it is hard to make it this way. Maybe the reason is, the book is in eBook format--most people still don’t take eBook serious--or the author is the only one talking about it. If you want to be successful like another author, the truth is research to know how the author succeeded.

The system is clear: if a famous person like Trump talks on media about you or what you do, millions, if not billions, of people would like to know you or it. What if it is a book, expect the gain to be astronomical.

For example, when I read the news on Forbes I felt desperate to read that book to know why the US incumbent president, Trump condemned it. 1.7 million People, or more than that have already done that.

Writing isn’t easy, everyone knew. You write a lot of shits or chaos several times before getting it right. You need to friend an agent to pitch an idea first before writing, Scott Young, an author of ULTRALEARNING and a founder of scottyoung.com, advised. If not, you would end up like many who struggled to find people to read their books and finally got disappointed. Compare successful writers with successful musicians, do you always see them advertise their products themselves? If publishers accept your writing idea and get your writing published, the current tradition is they are responsible for advertising your book.

From Fire and Fury, the author Michael Wolff earned an estimated $13 million from June 1, 2017, to June 1 2018, wrote Forbes staff Hayley C. Cuccinello.

Here are The World’s Highest-Paid Authors Of 2018, according to Cuccinello.


10. E.L James (tie)

Earnings: $10.5 million

10. Rick Riordan (tie)

Earnings: $10.5 million

8. Nora Roberts (tie)

Earnings: $12 million

8. Danielle Steel (tie)

Earnings: $12 million

7. Michael Wolff

Earnings: $13 million

5. Dan Brown (tie)

Earnings: $18.5 million

5. Jeff Kinney (tie)

Earnings: $18.5 million

4. John Grisham

Earnings: $21 million

3. Stephen King

Earnings: $27 million

2. J.K. Rowling

Earnings: $54 million

1. James Patterson

I am very interested in family, speech and writing industry.

This is really inspiring.

How to Position Yourself for Greatness


Why do some people make more money doing less difficult things than those making little money?

You may think the reason is they are well established, towering business people or civil servants worming constantly like sun. Their secret lies in positioning themselves for greatness. It's something that doesn't reveal itself to be astronomically evergreen at the start.

Which kind of a genuine business is this? Simply put: a variant of spokemanship. Position yourself through this newly budding, hidden variant and the result is an endless glory.

You may wonder why positioning yourself is easy.

Understanding the duty of a spokesperson is a key.

Who's a spokesperson? Simply put, great-looking, trustworthy person who speaks on behalf of a group or an organization.

Must you be employed to be that spokesperson? Must your group or organization recognize you?

These questions and more are answered here.

Most Nigerians don't put interest in becoming this variant of a spokesperson. They believe one must be employed to be a spokesperson. This is true for organizations, companies or government agencies but not for group.

Here are examples of some groups to choose in Nigeria: disable people, people in IDP camps, people living in infrastructure-deficit areas, people with lung and kidney failure, people with breast cancer, victims of police brutality, victims of rape and child abuse, the poor of the poorest, homosexuals or gay people, etc.

There're endless groups to ride on.

But while most people in your chosen group may not recognize you as their freedom fighter let alone pay you a dime, most of your readers and where you position yourself may recognize and offer you more opportunities to connect with the right people.

Some people are making money writing about climate change, right? Feminist writers have been making a lot of money representing women, right? Some writers are increasingly gaining from representing homosexuals, right?

You get the point and that's where I come in.

Most Nigerians are still wondering why someone would spend a mountain of money just to learn how to write, and why someone will lavishly pay you to write for him.

They never asked to know how publishers are lurking, making their augmenting profits from publishing an effective life-enriching content to more than 500,000 readers.

They don't also know any epic thing you write to represent a particular group of people is a big asset not for you alone and not for this generation alone. Thus, it's an authentic, automatic way of generating income especially to publishers and glory to the writer.

So how can we tap from this opportunity?

First, let's calm ourselves down to develop a rich skill of writing essential personal essay representing a particular group.

Writing this personal essay takes good time and it's sometimes boring. It's better to spend many months writing one that will succeed forever than writing a buffoon's legacy.

If you can't write what people would like to share and bookmark, this is just because you don't want to give yourself more time to ensure each word stalks a prey.

The key point is: to position yourself better, don't ever publish a mediocre work. Don't ever publish your best work yourself first. Submit to popular publishers, eg: Vanguard, Daily Trust, New York Times, etc.

How is that easier? How can you get the attention of popular publishers who rejected many writers?

Can it be possible?

The following points answer these and more other questions.

How to make yourself happy through this secret of public speaking

The best way to please yourself is to make many people interested in you. And to make people interested in you is to make yourself interesting.

According to Dale Carnegie, the author of How to Win Friends and Influence People, to be interesting you have to be interested.

How do you become more interesting?

Although it's obvious that having wealth attracts more friends, addressing people correctly attracts everybody. Attracting everybody is an amusing thing to ever do in the universe.

Everybody becomes very interested in you once you're convincing or entertaining. By addressing such great number of people, you make yourself more interesting.

But correctly addressing a number of people is taking a bull by the horns. Infact, in all generations many people fear addressing people. A few who can do it are mostly the rich, from comedians to politicians to top executives.

There's even a say that those who can stand and talk are mostly the successful and happy ones.

So why are only those people bold enough to adress the public?

In my opinion, only those people are willing to take a risk. The risk is: nomatter how talented you're, you may either make grammatical errors or have a slip of tongue or make unreasonable statement.

It's trying to avoid that risk that most people write speech. But the problem with that is if you won't read verbatim what you've written, it's difficult to cram what to deliver. As reading a speech doesn't make any one interesting, there's no any public speaker that's interesting through reading a speech.

No wonder, most people aren't interested in listening to most government officials.

That's why some speech presenters resort to coming up with bullet points, using them with more creative illustrations to emphasize on certain isues.

Yet the trouble with this system is it's a big risk because you can lack what to say or beat around the bush. Only risk takers can, at the end, make good use of bullet points.

Therefore, it's only your willingness to take a risk that'll help you stand out there as a hero. Only confident people can take a risk.

How to be more confident to entertain and educate many people by addressing them

1. Have a lot of anecdotes in your memory.

Anecdotes are very short stories usually used to illustrate something. When you begin to tell people of yourself or someone else to illustrate or show the disadvantage of late coming, you're creating an anecdote. Anecdote usually ends with something like, 'So it's not good to mismanage your time' or 'What you sow, you reap.'

Usually interesting, anecdote is something you can create at any time and anywhere while you're at ease.

2. Always practice forming and explaining bullet points or topics.

Doing this, you're building rich vocabularies and grammatical structures in your memory so that when you stand before people and begin to talk, the right words and expressions will trickle like water.

After reading this article, you can list the most important thing you learn from it: whatever you list becomes a bullet point or topic. Try explaining each in your words as practice.

I find doing this easier with Holy Bible since Holy Bible is written in verses. I'd form a topic, then I'd take my time trying to explain one verse before another, giving illustrations based on the topic.

Then I'll try to retell the story of Joseph, Moses or Jesus in my own words.

Whenever I stand before people, I realize eventhough I'm not telling the story I practiced, I'm using most of the vocabularies and grammatical structures.

What does this tell me and you?

It's clear our lack of confidence springs from our inability to generate raw materials that'll enable us express ourselves clearly. If you can clearly express yourself, what will you be afraid of?

3. Avoid pride.

Once you realize you're well equipped, over confidence can set in. So you may feel to brag or become arrogant, showing you're the king of public speakers. Nope.

This is the time to remember what Bill Newman, the author of 10 Laws of Leadership said: 'Don't let success go to your head. Remember--when success comes your way, walk in humility.'

If you fail to heed to Bill Newman's advice, what will happen to you is what Chinua Achebe, the author of Things Fall Apart; said in Chike and the River: 'Pride goeth before a fall.'

Strange things I discovered about my spending habits after using good saving strategy

Research has found saving money is one way everyone can attend financial freedom. And cutting down expenses by avoiding possession of liabilities is the easiest way.

But while this information is true, it doesn't work for me since my income was low. Plus I haven't developed any good budget-making habit.

So how did I latter get saving money easier?

I've read an article on personal finance where I learned one good way to find a good saving strategy is tracking one's spending habits by journaling every amount of money one spends.

When I tried it, I didn't only find it easier to save money. I discovered new things about myself.

First, I discovered I can feel the urge that pushes me to unnecessarily spend money or to buy unnecessary things. As I continue to document every amount of money I spend, once I feel an urge to buy something I notice the urge as my attention shifts to my expenditure account. And once this happened, I don't allow myself to spend money on unnecessary things.

Then, I felt how the urge comes. The urge usually comes whenever my mind is idle. I discover it is this feeling that always makes me not only spend money on unnecessary things but also spend my dear whole life.

Finally, I saw where most of my income go. Most of them go to my desire to please myself and people instead of to help myself and people. The difference between 'to please' and 'to help' is obvious but I couldn't control myself to do the right thing perhaps because I can't monitor the urge. Monitoring the urge is the first thing to do inorder to control one's spending habit.

So the bottom line is, documenting whatever we do everyday will always help us make better decision.

Unnecessary spending is inevitable if one can't track his or her spending habit. As Benjamin Franklin said:

"Beware of little expenses, a small leak will sink a great ship."