John N N Ng’ang’a Meditation Of 13th May 2024 Preparing For Old Age Write a book as your legacy.
Day 1
So as part of your legacy in your old age, you can write what life has taught you and would be beneficial to those behind you.
But You can’t write, first of all without a target group, number two without a message. The recommendation is that the message needs to be something you can summarize in one sentence before you write a whole book. In other words, before you write a whole book, write one sentence that summarizes what you want readers to learn. What message are you giving? And those of you who studied theology, are told each sermon must have one message. All other ideas must support that one message.
Yes, it is important in every book to have something you are trying to communicate. What are you trying to say? Once it is clear in your mind, as a concept, once it is clear in your mind, then you can expand it to half a page. We call this a concept paper. Anyone who reads it will know what it is you want to write about.
The third stage, once you are clear you have that strategy, is to ask yourself, what questions will that message answer? There was the big question, your theme, but break it into many questions, sub-questions, which need to be answered for the bigger question to be fully answered. Those sub-questions will be topics and chapters in your book.
In the process, you are creating an outline of the things you are doing. Of course, it may take time, it may not be one evening, but you are thinking. The way I do it myself may be different from yours. My typing speed is questionable. So, what have I done? I have a gadget called a digital recorder. I would recommend to every one of you who intends to write to buy one, a digital recorder. Why? You just turn it on, it starts recording what you are saying. You are in the kitchen, and the idea comes just record. Since you are not taping it for a radio station, the plates may be making noise, but you can still continue giving the ideas that are in your head. It is important that you find a way of recording the ideas at whatever time you get them.
Thus, once you are clear about the outline, the ideas will start popping up but times at the wrong times. Carry the thing in your pocket, and with it, whenever the idea comes, do not wait for an appropriate time. Sometimes an idea comes, and you say you will write it in the evening, but chances of remembering may be questionable. So, write or record it down.
What happens is that because you have an outline, the ideas will start popping up based on that outline. I was speaking with a sister who retired from Safaricom. And she was in customer service. And I said I cannot remember seeing a book about that. What are the issues specific to Kenyan customers? And if you were there for three, four, five, six seven years, you know Kenyan customers on every angle, the tall one, the fat one, the narrow ones, etc. All of them come to you. How do you handle them? So, you have a lot of information in your head. For you it is a real experience, it is not a theory.
Now, if you have that tape, you remember an experience, you just tell your story to yourself into the recorder. Of course, if somebody is listening it is okay. Your grandchild may be there listening. Turn the machine on so that not only are you talking to your grandchild, but you are also recording what you are remembering.
You know, a certain Doctor just writes about his patients. He does not write academic things, he just tells you what is happening in his clinic, but the stories are so interesting, we are glued to them. And you know in the process he has three targets. He has people who are being entertained, but he has people, Doctors, to understand what it means to be a Doctor. That any medical student will see the reality of life as a Doctor, but thirdly he also teaches us, the general public medicine. But it comes out of these stories. You have to agree he has a very good memory. You know not every Doctor has that kind of memory. Now, to aid your memory, buy a digital gadget. And now in most technological places, you can get it.
What is good about it? It is a record number one. Number two, it turns your information into a digital file. As soon as you listen it is not a tape, it turns it into a digital file, and then this same thing that was taping becomes a flash disk to transfer to your computer. Can you see now it is a flash disk? So, you just turn it from a tape into a flash disk, put it in your computer, and all the information is now downloaded to the computer. You can start recording on the now-empty gadget again. And that can be saved and, if you do not write out of it, your grandchild will write.
Day 2
So, it is critical that you see what I am trying to talk about. So, the outline has to be there before you write the book. Now, once you have done that, go back to the outline after some time and find out, which topic you have information already about. Topic five, yeah. Topic six, my talk to youth? Or if you are like me, most times when the idea comes, I have already been giving talks on it. Like now the idea of writing a book on work, I have done a lot of consultancies in the last ten years with various companies on motivating staff to work. I remember a time when Faulu wanted to grow quickly before it got sold, asked me to go to their three regions to talk to all staff. Now later we know they were growing to sell. I was asked by the CEO whether I can go throughout the Country talking to their staff about productivity and why they should be committed to their work. So I went right from Mombasa, through Nairobi, and Nakuru, we covered the whole Country. All those talks I was always recording.
I now needed to write about work, aaah, I remembered my notes and recording of many years ago. Like one topic here is the history of work, and I have already covered it with the Faulu group. And so, I was able to put it down. So, I am not giving you the story that you can find in textbooks, I am just telling you how I write. Isn’t that why you are reading this? So, I am just telling you how I write. So, I get all the information and allocate it to topics on the outline. What will happen is I will be left with chapter five, chapter seven, and chapter ten, where I have no idea what to write. And that is the time now to start research because I have no idea about it. Research may mean in that aspect you can interview somebody on the issue, research may mean you can go to Doctor, Google for information, and research might mean you might go to a library to fill up what is missing. That way Isn’t the book over?
So, it is important that you understand it is not a technical thing because each one of us has something different to write about. Now, once you have done that, you have draft number one, which is all the information now with the chapters filled up. Now, draft number one is not for editing. You read it yourself and you will be so embarrassed. Because in chapter five you are repeating a story already in chapter two. In chapter six it is what you should have said in chapter one. now, it is a total mess, but it is still a book.
So, what do you do? You now do what is called copy-paste. You remove this from here to the appropriate place, then from there to again the appropriate place. Then again you are left with chapter two which has very little information. You again have to do research. That way you can produce something that flows well but some do not seem to flow. You should not be saying this before you say this other one. So, you have to reorganize the chapters, and that way you can get draft number two.
Now you are ready to look for draft number three. For draft number three now you read the draft comfortably. Now you are looking at the ideas whether somebody else can understand them because sometimes you say something in the language that only you can understand. But you are not writing for yourself. So, you must find another phrase that somebody who is not from your home can understand. So, you read it with the other person in mind. That way you have draft number three done.
For draft number four, you are now thinking, I want to give this thing to an Editor who will question me. You now read it with the Editor in mind. How is the English? Is it grammatical? Are there errors? And it is normally on draft number four that you now hand it over to somebody else who is your friend and knows the subject to handle. That is before you hand it to a technical Editor, a qualified Editor. Maybe you can ask one of your relatives to read it, and they will look at it and give you feedback. This way you produce draft five.
Day 3
Although you still see mistakes in books, people have done a lot of work despite the mistakes appearing because of all those drafts and the people who deal with them. This is now handed over to a publisher.
Now, if you have now got a clean draft, you go to the area of publishing. A publisher is a businessperson. Why is he a businessman? He makes his money with three things; number one identifying a market need, number two identifying a book that the market needs, and number three deciding a price that can give him profit. Unfortunately, many people are calling themselves publishers and they are not publishers. They want to call themselves publishers and ask you to produce your own money. When you pay for the publishing that is called self-publishing. That way you are the businessman for you are the one taking the risks. So, if the guy is not taking risks, he should call himself a publisher. He is an Editor because you see you need editing.
The work of publishers is a process. Once the writer has finished; the publisher does several things. Number one is to edit it. He has an expert Editor, so he can see the language, the flow, the English. He has to look at it and keep returning to you until you agree it is a good book. The Editor must be paid, but he by the publisher.
The second thing, once the book has been edited, the next step is to give to a proof-reader, and a proof-reader is not an Editor. He is not looking at the flow; he is looking at the English. He can pick the wrong words and the wrong prepositions. He is a proof-reader, and he only comes in after the Editor has finished the work. The Editor is happy for it to be published because somebody could leave it out. There are experts in proofreading. By the way, you can’t effectively edit your book and you cannot proofread your book, because if you are writing Kikuyu in English, you will not see the problem. So, it will be important that somebody other than yourself reads it. So again, the publisher must pay the proof-reader because he has to be paid for his work.
So, once you have the edited book and a proofread book, you now are ready for the designer. The designer is the one who designs whether the book will be fat or narrow or what will it look like. Like if you look at my work ethics books, there are guys on the cover who look like engineers in a workplace. Do not congratulate me. It is the designer. He can look at the theme of the book, and design a cover that relates to it. Although I participated, he gave me about seven or so different designs and asked me to choose which one I liked. And because I know that is not my area of strength, I sent to my whole family so that all the children and their husbands and my wife, everybody voted, and this is what they voted for. My vote did not count because that is not my area of strength. I am after the content, not the look outside.
So, somebody designs the look of the pages and cover. He is the one who will put the font of the page. So even if the content is terrible, if you have a good designer, he can make the terrible content look presentable. It will attract readers. But of course, after chapter two, somebody will know it is not worth reading it through. So, it will be important that you write good content. But that again, the designer, you can see it is expert work, and he must be paid when you design the book. Once it is fully designed, it will be put into a position where the printer can handle it.
And so, you now go to a printer. Again, the printer must be paid by who? By the publisher. Once the book comes out of print, you must look for a Distributor; otherwise you will become a hawker. It is important to look for a Distributor. Why? You have a very low penetration of the market. So, if you give it to a Distributor, he will reach more people.
Like my books used to be distributed by Biblica. Biblica are the owners of the NIV Bible. So, since they must move their NIV Bible, they carry my books along. They have a van, going all over the Country, visiting the various bookshops. But for that to happen, they take a big share of the cover price from the publisher.
Sometimes you feel bad, eeeh I am the one who wrote. And I get very little? By the way, in a book the writer gets the least percentage. The other people get more. And that is very disappointing. Do not you agree? Because you are the one who produced the product. But the Distributor wants forty or forty-five percent of the cover price. And that can be quite an issue. But if you stay with the book, then you must become a hawker, and I wonder how many people you will reach, and whether you will reach your target market. So, you need to appoint a Distributor. The publisher appoints a Distributor. Remember the publisher is the risk taker. He is desperate for a return. He has put in heavy investment, in a book like this, most likely he has put up something going above half a million towards a million Shillings. All that process, before paying the writer a single shilling. Now, that is money down the drain unless the book sells. So, the publisher must be the expert in appointing the Distributor.
Day 4
By the way a lot of you can write free things. In addition to writing books, I write something that is now free of charge, not sold, and is in my website. So, you can go to my website, www.johnngang.org for free material. You can find a lot of information on my website. First of all, you can find the written information. For the last ten years, I have been writing an article each week.
One time I was writing about Christianity and culture. There is a big move in Kikuyu land for churches to go back to traditions. Have you heard of it? Yeah. In other words, they are calling you a kihii – boy. unless you have given a goat to be called an adult. So that is frightening Christians to an extent that even church people are starting to give the goat. So, I chose to write about it. Initially, it was not in a book, but it was and still is free information that I send to my mentees. When I started, I had fifty people, now there are more than three thousand, seven hundred people all over the world who receive my writings plus the ones that just visit the website.
By the way, do not give me credit. Even the idea of a website is from my mentees. I deal with young people, who said, no, no, no. Brother Ng’ang’a more people should hear this information. I said, how? Put in something called a website. What is that? Now, they worked it out until it was a website.
Then the other day my mentees said, no, no, no. You should be on YouTube. I said, You what? She said, There is nothing for you to do, just give permit and I will create it. She went and opened an account. My YouTube account is john n n nganga. Again, you will find more than several hundred videos or audio that are available there for those who do not want to read to listen to the messages. Again, it is a young person who made it happen. Then the other day when WhatsApp came, I started a two-minute talk. Every morning, I give two-minute talk. Currently, I am doing a character study on the leadership of Moses which is only two minutes per session. Somebody asked me, why two minutes? I do not want you to switch me off. So, the only question is whether I can say something sensible in two minutes. And I pray to God, He gives me that ability. So at least I have done that for a while. So, if you go to my website, it can take me to my two minutes daily. But if you want to receive it direct, you email me your WhatsApp line, then every time I give the talk in the morning, it is posted to you so that you can actually listen. The same way with my meditations. If you do not want to keep going to my website, there is a place you put your email address, it is called subscribing. If you put your email address, every time I put new material on my website, it is automatically sent to you. Do not ask me how it is done, I just trust the young people. And it goes on. So, you do not have to go to my website if you put your email address there. All that is a way of publishing for legacy.
Day 5
But let us say a little more about distribution. So those who do not buy from a bookshop can still get my material in other ways. If you want to buy a digital book, please note all my books are digitized, so you can buy it from Amazon, simply by identifying the book on my website.
But When you say the Distributor gets forty percent of the cover price, is that inclusive of royalties? No, no, no. The Distributor has nothing to do with the writer but the Publisher. Like now for me, my old Distributor his interest is NIV Bible. If I add my books to him, he wants to be paid for it. So, they will ask for forty percent, and for some, if you refuse, he leaves you alone. After all he is not working for your books; he is working for his Bibles.
So, the publisher has to pay everybody, and the last person they pay is called the writer. The writer is not paid up front, the writer is paid what is called royalty, and royalty is after they do sales data analysis for maybe a whole year. How many books he has sold, and how much is the royalty percentage per book. Ten percent. Then all the books he has sold, you get one cheque per year.
So, your book does not belong to you: it is yours as you can see in the copyright. However, the publisher is the one who is supposed to go to the National Library to register the copyright. You can see each book has a copyright. That is an allocation of the Kenya government on the copyright, such that if somebody has the material without your permission you can legally sue them, including the publisher. He cannot use the material without your authority. So as long as your book has a copyright, which is gotten from the National Library, you can determine what happens to it, a department that allocates copyright numbers.
But you write a book and then give it to a publisher who will look at it and then decide whether it is a good book or it is sellable. Remember a lot of the material I prepare after I give a talk on the topic. In other words, there is no book I have written which did not begin as a talk somewhere. So, I prepare before I give the talk, and then I reorganize the materials to become a book as we saw Earlier.
Of course, writing costs. First it is time. But also you have a computer, but you did not buy the computer to write, you have a house, you never bought the house just to write. Whether you write or you do not you already have these sunk costs.
So why do not you write? And remember your book might be picked by KICD and you will be a multi-millionaire. But it must be published first. It is not true that all the books will not bring money, they may be picked and become big. Depending on your negotiations with the publisher it may be a reasonable royalty, let’s say you have twenty percent of the cover price. If the price is a thousand shillings for the book, that means for every book that sells you have two hundred shillings. If you were able to sell a thousand books, how much money do you have? Two hundred thousand.
Isn’t that good money for an old, retired man? Certainly not good enough money if you have children in school. It is not the kind of thing you do to pay your school fees, but it certainly will give you some money. Let me not kill the idea it brings you money. Books sell. Many people would have given up writing. Books do bring money; it is only it can’t make you a millionaire in reading public Kenya. That is the message I want you to get. You cannot be rich because of writing but you can be happy because people will give you feedback that makes you know the book is making an impact. But I am only talking from my point of view.
Day 6
Remember my topic is, why should you write as an old person? Have I answered that question? Because the older you are, the more information you are likely to have. So, everybody old should write. That is my message. If I didn’t come out clearly, that is my message. By the time you reach fifty, sixty, and some of you are eighty, it needs to be very clear that you are at the level where you have information that you are threatening to go to the grave with. So, it is not the kind of thing you say you will do tomorrow when you are old.
From the way Monroe was talking in Nairobi on his last visit, it sounds like he didn’t know he would die. But he left here and went to die, after challenging Kenyans. I need to emphasize, that older people must write for three reasons.
Number one, they already have information. Their experiences are valid, and they have information on various topics including a book on old age. Because you see you are the old one, so you know it better. So, you gather the information and then write for all of us.
Maybe somebody was in customer service. We need books on customer service. Or it is not that. We want old people to talk to us about the Mau Mau era before they die. A lot of people were dying before talking. But they were old enough to know what was happening. So, somebody needs to write it, not for political reasons. A lot of books written on Mau Mau are for political reasons, but what happened on the ground? So, there are many things can say.
And for, some of you is technical. You can write, and given your history, when somebody sees your CV, they want to find out what you say because they know you have information.
So, I am saying the first reason old people need to write is because they have information not because they are brighter than young people, but because God has kept them longer.
Number two, they need to write because they do not have long to go. I know that is not good but you see the younger person can still write later you if you are over fifty, you know the Bible says on average you will live to seventy years. You know the other day I was speaking in the funeral of one of my agemates, and everybody who talked, before me said, eeeh you know, we must be halfway now. They said, when you see our parents go, we are halfway to death. When I came to talk, I said, how cheated could you be? If you are the firstborn of your mother, she was a teenager when she gave birth to you. Remember they were not going to school. They used to get married as teenagers. So, if God blesses you with as many years as your mother, you have only fifteen or so years to go. So, it is important to understand you are not halfway, you are about to follow her. So, it is important to understand then, old people need to write because they do not have long to go.
Thirdly, old people need to write because of three sub-reasons. Number one, you will enjoy doing it. To share that information, you see the book, you look back and say, haiya, what a product from me ... So, to write, even if not many people buy, for it is an enjoyable thing.
So just write the book and leave it to posterity. Even if it is not published at all, among the things you leave with your family, it is something that you have recorded. So, it is an interesting thing, it is an enjoyable thing. Just write it. And getting it, the process I gave, it is an enjoyable thing. Number two, it is not just enjoyable in writing, it is a way of occupying yourself productively.
You cannot be writing a book and quarrelling with your grandchildren, when you have a reason to wake up. And somehow until the book is ready, you are fully occupied. So, people who are writing are joyful. But thirdly and importantly, you will become a useful person. As you are researching, when your grandchild talks to you, you have the right information. You did not produce it for him, but now every time people come to visit you, you are alive participating in discussions. So, if you are idle, every time people come to visit you, you start telling them, you have not visited me, it is three weeks since you came. Have you forgotten me? That quarrel will make them now last another six weeks. But when you are writing there is something ... you want everybody to hear. Everybody will want to come to hear the kind of things you are writing because you are productive.
My suggestion would be, if you are not happy with your current publisher, you need to write to him and tell him not to reprint your book. And because you are the one with the copyright, you have the power to tell him not to print beyond what he has printed. The only thing he will negotiate with you as to how many copies he has and when you should now be able to buy them back.
Day 7
Some publishers just republish, because some people get what is called ... rights, to re-publish using a different one. Somebody like Arba Publishers publishes American books in Kenya and reprints them in Kenya. So, it is possible to do it, but you must get a legal right.
ISBN allocated to this publisher are not the ones allocated to this other publisher. So as soon as you go to the other publisher, you will have to have a different ISBN.
If you think you are not a good writer, why don’t you produce a bad draft and let somebody help you to improve it? Let somebody say, no, no, no. But I do not mind. I know I do not how to write, so I will listen to him advice.
However,, Daystar University normally has short writing courses. You can ask them when they are going to have the next short course on writing. PAC University also trains people in writing. I really would like to encourage you to write. I hope that as you stop reading this, leave with the idea that the book needs to be finished within the next year. However, if you intend to write, the book should go to three years, but you are writing.
When you write your biography or whatever story, you are going to mention some things and some people. What are the implications of mentioning people in your book? What I do myself, I try to remove people’s names. I will tell the story and change a few facts such that you might guess but not be sure who I am talking about. If you are my friend and you were in Kijabe High School, you will start guessing I am talking about you. But the information is that in a court of law, you can’t prove it. You know, the other day I was speaking in a church, and I gave examples of my first job after university, when I worked for a Development Bank. And I talked about this rich man who came for his collateral to be released. And we were called project officers. We were so impressed; this guy owns so much property: then I gave the example of how he told us. No, no, no, do not admire me. I wish I were educated like you. And it was a debate between us young people and this uneducated guy who was very rich. After church came out, somebody later told me, I know who you were talking about. I said, who? He is my uncle. I said, let’s discuss it. How do you know it is him? But the information is like his. I said, What about this and this? Is it true of your uncle? Do you believe your uncle is the only rich man who owns property in Nairobi? Now, in the end of course, he had to admit it looks like but you can’t say it is. So, you need to be careful that you do not give information that can identify your example without his permission.
The Editor says, he was told by Mr Njenga, nobody should be mentioned in my book negatively. So, whenever the story had something negative, he would strike it out. He said, my book will not be the source of bringing people down. So, you shouldn’t be picking somebody to show how good you are, in talking about how bad your Headmaster was, and people can tell who the name of the headmaster. So, you need to be very careful how you handle examples. And if possible, and it is possible to tell your story, without necessarily messing up other people’s stories.
So, write even a bad draft in whatever language but ensure you leave your story. Because I told you to write it in Luhya English, when you give it to the Editor they will rewrite and tell you, change here, change there, change there until finally it is something sensible. And even if you do not go to a professional Editor, one of your relatives is likely to be better in English. So do not fail to write because of your English or because of your Kiswahili. Write it, somebody will improve it, and the content will still remain your copyright...
For most people who are Westerners, their books come from journaling. What is journaling? Every day write down the experiences of the day and the important issues of the day. So, by the time you are fifty, you have many books. Then out of your journaling, you can pick a topic and then go through the journal picking only the issues that are related to your topic. So, it is the same thing as using a voice recorder.
So, it depends on what you are after. Some people say I am journaling, but three weeks later they have not written anything. So do the one that is comfortable with you. I do not believe there are rules in the game. What you want is the product at the end.
But journaling would be certainly helpful if that is the way you want it. Write it daily, after you have written for three years, there will be many topics out of it, and you can write many books out of it. But you know you do not call a journal a diary. A diary record things you are having in a meeting ... a journal says exactly why were you having a meeting. Why did you have the meeting? So, the difference between a diary and a journal is that a journal has reflections on what happened. I can write a book out of a journal, but I can’t write a book out of a diary.
Audio Preachings
Subscribe to my YouTube Channel for Audio Preachings
Get access to my books on Amazon:
Marketplace Leadership - The Nehemiah Style
Christianity and Culture
Discover your Life's Purpose
A Leader's Work Ethics
The Secret of Contentment
A Leader's Source of Influence
Christian Professionals - Leading in the Marketplace
The Character of an Influential Leader
Leadership King David's Style
Integrity - The Litmus Test of Good Leadership
The Leader as a Steward
Finding a Life Partner
Friendship
Check out previous devotions on www.johnnganga.org
