Writing a Weather Book. Becoming an Author.

The broadcast meteorologist is a storyteller. The story typically is the weather forecast, or why a type of weather is happening or will happen, or a recap of a memorable recent or historical weather event. Building upon a growing body of personal knowledge and experience over time, the broadcast meteorologist engages the viewer or listener in live and recorded broadcasts, and through in-person presentations. For some meteorologists, a natural extension of their communication skill and weather passion is to author a book. Writing a book requires additional skills of organization and composition. Do you have the “write stuff” to be an author?

Weather books may be science textbooks, fictional novels, memoirs, historical accounts, or any combination of these. Weather books may be targeted to children, adults or some other demographic. This presentation from AMS Fellow and published author Alan Sealls delves into the basics and options of becoming a published author. Given avenues of self-publishing and traditional publishing, we examine typical amounts of time, effort, and money to create a written work and an audiobook. The publishing process involves writing, marketing, advertising and distribution. We’ll see samples of book creation cost, with estimates of potential profit. All of this is tempered by real statistics of book competition, success rate, along with anecdotes from a first-time author.