# Please introduce yourself and your book(s)!
As a self-improvement author, I am dedicated to personal finance, career building, and goal setting. My books are written for those who want to take control and achieve the personal and professional dreams that matter most in their life. My fourth book, Build Wealth With Common Stocks, was released worldwide on January 19, 2021. The book is currently available in hardcover and eBook with the audiobook and paperback editions to follow. I am also the author of the previously published books Hire Train Monitor Motivate, The Ten Domains of Effective Goal Setting, and A Great Place to Learn & Earn. I have contributed to Seeking Alpha, TalkMarkets, HR.com, and Career Education Review. I received a Bachelor of Science in business studies as a Garden State Scholar at Stockton University of New Jersey and completed The Practice of Management Program at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.
# What is/are the real-life story(ies) behind your book(s)?
Essentially, I have built a nonfiction author career writing what I know and learning what I don’t know.
Build Wealth With Common Stocks is a case study of my family portfolio of the stocks of quality companies that has outperformed the S&P 500 benchmark since its inception in 2009 based on average return per holding.
Hire Train Monitor Motivate is a treatise from a career as an executive. I learned how to build a thriving organization through the art and science of hiring, training, monitoring, and motivating teams that drove quantity from quality.
A seminar I attended in New York City inspired The Ten Domains of Effective Goal Setting. Its premise became the driving force for my life’s achievements. It remains the most effective goal-setting template I have ever encountered.
My first book, A Great Place to Learn and Earn, is the professional memoir of my former twenty-five-year career in postsecondary career education.
# What inspires/inspired your creativity?
My ninth-grade English teacher assigned the writing of an original two-act play as part of her curriculum. She informed me that mine —about a fictional surfing contest in Cape Hatteras, North Caroline — was the best she had read in all the years of assigning the project. Naturally, I blushed, said ‘thank you,’ and went back to being a high school student. But then a college professor took me under her wings and taught me how to research and write news articles about campus life. That experience led me down a path of journalistic business writing, and ultimately nonfiction books.
An innate, lifelong desire to make a living by making a difference inspires my book creations and all the work that goes with it as an independent author, including research, writing, editing, proofreading, designing, publishing, promoting, and marketing.
# What are the biggest mistakes you can make in a book?
Not using beta readers, editors, and proofreaders to catch mistakes and improve the book’s connection to potential readers.
# Do you have tips on choosing titles and covers?
I use Google Keywords Planner to pick titles and subtitles and a professional book designer for the cover. I will submit a rough of my vision for the cover, but let the designer’s creativity drive the final proof.
# How do bad reviews and negative feedback affect you, and how do you deal with them?
Nobody likes bad reviews, but in my view, a bad review is better than no reviews as I think readers trust books with varied feedback.
I find getting readers to review a book is the biggest challenge as an author. It is estimated that only 2% of book readers write a review, yet the 98% that don’t often make their book-buying decision on the starred feedback of the 2%. So the Catch-22 for an author is you need reviews to sell books, but you need to sell books to get reviews.
# What were the best, worst, and most surprising things you encountered during the entire process of completing your book(s)?
The best thing would be how I discovered that the process of writing, designing, and publishing a book is by far the most professionally rewarding endeavor of my life. The worst experience is sales levels not always being what you had hoped for or anticipated, although my latest entry, Build Wealth With Common Stocks, is already the best seller of my four books. The most surprising thing I have encountered is the support and encouragement you get from friends, family, colleagues, and followers. I have been pleasantly surprised by this overwhelming backing of the book writing effort.
# Do you tend towards personal satisfaction or aim to serve your readers? Do you balance the two, and how?
Despite the personal satisfaction of writing and publishing a book, I believe the balance has to sway almost 100% to the reader. Serving the book buyer is why you wrote it in the first place. Otherwise, you might as well write the manuscript for yourself to read when the mood allows and save all the money spent on editing, designing, publishing, distributing, promoting, and marketing the book. In other words, the reader must come first.
# Do you have any creativity tricks?
Mirroring the best practices and techniques of successful authors and other creative practitioners is wise. By following the example of best-selling nonfiction author Mike Michalowicz, focusing on authoring and marketing books instead of being a super writer of articles, blogs, podcasts, videos, and so on inspired me to focus 100% on writing and publishing books. The result is what I believe to be my best effort: Build Wealth With Common Stocks.
# What are your plans for future books?
I am currently working with my wife Suzan on her memoir about living and coping with Type I Diabetes (T1D) and its complications. The working title is One of a Million Faces.
A book on motivational strategies (both self-directed and other-directed) is also on my nonfiction author radar.
# Tell us some quirky facts about yourself
The quirkiest thing about me is I tend not to be quirky, although I am often credited with having a good one-liner sense of humor.
I was born and raised in New Jersey, about 25 miles from Manhattan, and spent my summers at the Jersey Shore — mine was a more sane real-life experience than the MTV reality series. My beautiful, supportive, and very intuitive wife, Suzan, also grew up in the northern New Jersey suburbs of New York City. As a student of British history, she attended a college exchange program in Caerleon, Wales, and later lived and worked in Kensington High Street, London. We have since traveled to Great Britain together on three different occasions.
We now reside happily in historic South Central Pennsylvania, USA.
Book links:
Author website: https://davidjwaldron.com/
Amazon UK – https://www.amazon.co.uk/Build-Wealth-Common-Stocks-Market-Beating/dp/1735552402
Book Depository (UK) – https://www.bookdepository.com/Build-Wealth-With-Common-Stocks-David-J-Waldron/9781735552408
Barnes & Noble (US) – https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/build-wealth-with-common-stocks-david-j-waldron/1137950322?ean=9781735552408