What should I do before writing a book to gain some reputation?

What is your skill or area of expertise?

Probably gain some fame so someone will care abput your book.

Write, write, write, write, write and write some more. Hone your writing skills while you send work to all sorts of publications (online or print) that accept articles. Getting published, and getting published multiple times will help. Also, start a blog. A good blog and write, write, write, write, write.

Take some writing workshops. Talk to other writing professionals, and writer’s agents to get advice. Make sure you have tons of stuff that you have written and ready to go in a portfolio (online and in print). Update those samples of work periodically.

Try to meet up with professional writers and get into some type of writing guild if you can. The more you write, the better you will get (hopefully) and the more you hang around real published writers and people who can give you writing work the better.

Just curious to know if you have a genre in mind for you book? Even if you say you are not ready to write you actual book, you really need to be always writing your book, in between writing all of the other stuff I mentioned. Books take a long time to write, and they’re not “just written” they are formed and changed, and altered in many ways, and edited, and edited, and edited. Start writing your book now, even if you end up changing it many, many times.

Good luck to you : )

Is there a particular author or you admire? The more you read of his/her books, the more of that style you’ll acquire.

I’d suggest writing a couple books now. Understand you will probably not get rich and may not get published, but you will get feedback. Take that feedback and internalize it. Think about what the people are saying about your writing. Is it too stiff, not enough character development, poorly researched…..whatever it happens to be, think about it and think about how you can improve. Eventually you will put out something that will be recognized.

Self publish on blurb.com website and gain experience. If you sell any you can set your Royalties on each sale to cover the costs,plus this site does the selling for you, you don’t have to do anything except promote on your own if you like.
You are in control of where that book takes off.
I give mine out for Christmas Gifts, etc
Did a Family History book,Photo books and an attempt at Allegory stories. was good experience and nice to see it in print.I am still experimenting trying everything on this website from Novels,to cookbooks to photo books etc
I went to lots of workshops and was not happy as writers should write from the heart about what they are passionate about.
The only thing about writing courses that I found important is the usual grammar and spelling and outlines of your story development that helped. Also screen writing online courses and books like Screenwriting for Dummies, was helpful.
I think that too many wannabe writers are caught up in ‘correctness of writing their story” .
Very successful writers write in their own style and their own way.
I noticed Famous writer Diana Gabaldon of the Outlander series ( and movies) used a succession of run on sentences quite frequently in her stories.This use of run on sentences was discouraged in a lot of writing courses and in High School .
It goes to show one that just because someone else says that you should not do that it doesn’t make it written in stone. Creative writers write how they communicate in real life and still generate very good stories. Mark Twain for example was the first to use dialogue that was out of character for his time and therefore his works stood out from the mundane or what was expected.Do the unique and it will stand out and inspire others.

Where did the writer go? He’s not writing back to us : (

@Kardamom
Probably busy writing?