How to Write a Book

 Like everything else, you should want to write one, and badly. Motivation internally arising is what leads you into the exercise, in my view. For instance, a strong urge to simplify the concepts of Marketing Research had me motivated enough to pen my first book- on Marketing Research, now in its fourth edition and used by many B schools or research scholars. I wrote it in the style I taught- lots of examples, including cases written by past students. I might as well say that I am against the current trend to not use packaged software which is simple to use, and teach programming all over again to unsuspecting kids (of all ages).

The rest falls into place, unless it's fiction that you are trying to write. That I don't have any advice on, since I haven't tried writing it. Maybe other writers can offer some. The second genre I have tried is non-fiction, or autobiographical. I first wrote this autobiography around 2009, and it was entirely planned, written and (self) published within 8-9 months. Pothi was the platform I used, and my daughter did the cover design. Writing came easy, because all I had to do was pick on incidents from my own life, or events as they unfolded. 

Both types have found readers, and I got some feedback from readers, most of it positive. I also wrote a couple of other books- on Services Marketing with cases written by IIMK students, and one on Brand Management with Bhagyalakshmi Venkatesh, a friend and ex-colleague. More recently, a collated book of cases on Digital Marketing was published with Romi Sainy and me editing some original Indian cases sourced from both our alumni.

Pic from the launch of my autobiography, above. The publisher, Jaya Jha, and Sharu Rangnekar who launched the book, are with me.

Ambition

I was impressed by the play Julius Caesar which I studied in school-mainly, I was impressed by his ambition.

So I decided to be ambitious, like Big Bro Julius.

And got into studying like crazy, and maxed all my subjects in school. Almost topped my class in the board exams too.

After going into college, this translated into trying to watch all the (Hindi) films in town..and almost did that in the five years I was there. In my MBA days, looking at all the other smart and ambitious people that surrounded me, I decided to go slow, and concentrated on reading non-text books- Like PG Wodehouse and others.

During my stint in the U.S., my ambition changed to travelling to all the States that united to form the USA...well, I travelled to around 40 of the fifty states. Threw in a few European countries too, on a Eurail Pass.

Coming back to India, I concentrated on writing, mostly, and managed to write a couple of-horror of horrors- text books! That some people actually read them is a tribute to their patience. Blogging followed, naturally, thanks to being egged on by my BIL. That some people actually read them never ceases to amaze me.

Looking at every Tom, Dick and Harry writing his autobiography, I grew ambitious, and wrote My Experiments with Half-truths. Somewhere in between all this, I played Golf (starting at Harihar, continuing at Nagpur), and also created a small Golf course at IMT Nagpur.

Now, my ambition is scaled down, to meeting nice people, looking at Nice DPs (and awarding the good ones), and some good food and drink (like Vietnamese coffee), books, occasional travel, films, music (retro), watching my students do well in life..

Also visited the famous Saraafa in Indore, among other things..had been a long-time ambition.

Text Book Nostalgia

I am suddenly nostalgic about text books. Not certain I read all of them, though.

Resnick and Halliday was a Physics text.

BL Theraja wrote several books that became our Bibles for Electrical Engineering.

Tuli's book on Chemistry I still remember the title of.

Pindyck and Rubenfeld was one for Macroeconomics, and Paul Samuelson, for Microeconomics.

Don't remember the book for Advertising, only the fancy ads shown by guest faculty at IIMB.

There was also a thick Operations Research book, that terrified me by its sheer size.

But I was impressed by some non-text books about various management disciplines. Ogilvy on Advertising, Positioning, Maverick, The Goal, for instance.

I did not exactly like them, but some books that I referred to in Marketing Research included those by Green and Tull, Luck and Rubin, and Churchill. They inspired me to write my own.