If you are anything like me, just the thought of learning or reading a book is dreadful let alone authoring one. Well, this was me one year ago. Today, I can proudly say I am an author of an SAP PRESS book - Integrating Sales and Distribution in SAP S/4HANA. Hi, my name is Kartik Dua and in this article I would like to share my experience of how I came about being an author, with the anticipation that I can encourage people like me, who have the hidden talent in them but just need the gentle nudging.
We all know SAP loves acronyms, so let me use an acronym to highlight my incredible journey from being a book Reader to a book Author. The acronym is AUTHOR.
A – A is for Aptitude. If you have the aptitude for authoring a book, then I will urge you to just go for it. The initial dive will get you nervous but once you are in, I can almost promise you will swim through to the finishing line like a champion.
U – U is for Unconditional Rewards. I wrote the book out of passion and with the emotion that readers will benefit from my experience (good and bad). There was never a moment where I thought I want to sell my book commercially. I guess that is what kept me motivated throughout the journey – the unconditional reward of helping fellow SAPers become experts in their own domains.
T – T is for Tag Team Partners. If you ask the most successful leaders around you as to what is the secret of their success, they will say it is either the inspiration of a family member, or the motivation of a friend, or the encouragement of a colleague, or the guidance of a mentor/coach or all the above. For me it's all the above. I had a great co-authoring team. I received all my motivation and inspiration from my wife and my 3-year-old boy. There were many colleagues and friends who encouraged and helped me on the days where I felt dark and drowsy. And I had the best mentoring/coaching team in form of SAP PRESS or Rheinwerk Publishing.
H – H is for Humility. Do not be afraid to ask for help and once you receive the help, do not be shy to express gratitude. This mantra is not just true for aspiring authors, but you can make this an armor in your everyday professional and personal life too. By doing this you are opening many closed doors which will direct you to numerous paths of success and achievements.
O – O is for Open mind. You can not even imagine how many versions of table of content my book went through until I reached my final version. The first step in writing is a book is to come up with a table of content (TOC) and then have the open mind that the TOC will go through many iterations as you progress along your book journey.
R – R is for Resiliency. Writing a book is not an overnight task, it will take you weeks if not months to write one depending on the scope of your book(it took us roughly 6 months to write a 600ish-page book). So be prepared to fall. A winner is not someone who does not fall, but a winner is the one who is resilient about her/his fall and then stands up with even more confidence to march towards the end goal.
I strongly suggest to develop these qualities of an AUTHOR, and your book will be the next best-seller. If you are looking for any kind of guidance or coaching, feel free to reach out. You can easily find me on SAP Community and/or LinkedIn. Or you can add comments to this blog article.
We all know SAP loves acronyms, so let me use an acronym to highlight my incredible journey from being a book Reader to a book Author. The acronym is AUTHOR.
AUTHOR
A – A is for Aptitude. If you have the aptitude for authoring a book, then I will urge you to just go for it. The initial dive will get you nervous but once you are in, I can almost promise you will swim through to the finishing line like a champion.
U – U is for Unconditional Rewards. I wrote the book out of passion and with the emotion that readers will benefit from my experience (good and bad). There was never a moment where I thought I want to sell my book commercially. I guess that is what kept me motivated throughout the journey – the unconditional reward of helping fellow SAPers become experts in their own domains.
T – T is for Tag Team Partners. If you ask the most successful leaders around you as to what is the secret of their success, they will say it is either the inspiration of a family member, or the motivation of a friend, or the encouragement of a colleague, or the guidance of a mentor/coach or all the above. For me it's all the above. I had a great co-authoring team. I received all my motivation and inspiration from my wife and my 3-year-old boy. There were many colleagues and friends who encouraged and helped me on the days where I felt dark and drowsy. And I had the best mentoring/coaching team in form of SAP PRESS or Rheinwerk Publishing.
H – H is for Humility. Do not be afraid to ask for help and once you receive the help, do not be shy to express gratitude. This mantra is not just true for aspiring authors, but you can make this an armor in your everyday professional and personal life too. By doing this you are opening many closed doors which will direct you to numerous paths of success and achievements.
O – O is for Open mind. You can not even imagine how many versions of table of content my book went through until I reached my final version. The first step in writing is a book is to come up with a table of content (TOC) and then have the open mind that the TOC will go through many iterations as you progress along your book journey.
R – R is for Resiliency. Writing a book is not an overnight task, it will take you weeks if not months to write one depending on the scope of your book(it took us roughly 6 months to write a 600ish-page book). So be prepared to fall. A winner is not someone who does not fall, but a winner is the one who is resilient about her/his fall and then stands up with even more confidence to march towards the end goal.
I strongly suggest to develop these qualities of an AUTHOR, and your book will be the next best-seller. If you are looking for any kind of guidance or coaching, feel free to reach out. You can easily find me on SAP Community and/or LinkedIn. Or you can add comments to this blog article.
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