The Four Biggest Questions People Ask About The Books They Plan To Write.
If you Google the late Dr. Wayne Dyer you’ll learn something about a motivational speaker born in Detroit who died, no richer than your average Pharaoh, in Maui.
Obviously, Buddy made some pretty solid choices along the way. One of them, maybe the best of the bunch, centered on the decision to include his face on the cover of his debut book, the brilliantly titled Your Erroneous Zones, way back in 1976.
On the surface the book promised (and delivered) a step-by-step process to remedy the reflexive human tendency toward self-sabotage.
But here’s what the cover really said: just because you are spectacularly, irredeemably bald, there are still fortunes to be made. That’s why Dr. Dyer’s shoulder-length forehead became something of an imprimatur for his 30 or so books.
Leukemia got him in 2015. In his 75 years, Dr. Wayne Dyer helped a lot of people, sold a lot of books, financed a couple of ex-wives and became a FAO, Friend of Oprah, to boot.
Many people can't countenance the idea of paying for a co-written book, which is what we do.
That doesn't mean these people can't write books that supercharge their businesses. When people talk to me about writing a book they have four questions. I hope these answers help.
You should know this puts me in opposition to current publishers who disdain faces on their covers. All the hot business or non-fiction titles, 10X IS EASIER THAN 2X, Nuclear Habits, Quit, get by quite nicely without the writer going all Dr. Wayne Dyer. Just take a look at the books above if you need more proof.
The thing is, we do judge a book by its cover. In the second or two it takes to examine a face, we seek to confirm our buying choice. We want the folks on the cover to look like the people they say they are.
Consider two of the covers we did for our clients.
The cover to Dr. Kwadwo Kyeremanteng’s Unapologetic Leadership operates in absolute alignment with Dr K’s countenance and message. He is self-assured and direct. This is a handsome, young, professional man on a mission. Deal with it.
Would you want this guy as your doctor? Uh…yes. Could you see him on a board of directors? Only if you wanted to get shit done really, really well.
Ron Foxcroft’s cover for The 40 Ways Of The Fox says as much but in a totally different way.
Obviously, Ron is a referee. That means that unlike Dr. Kyermanteng, he spends much of his time around people playing games, not adjudicating health care policy or making life and death decisions…unless you consider whether to call a double dribble life-threatening.
This is an older guy who likely enjoys life and probably has more than enough to say about it.
Would he be the right guy to work your high school game? Absolutely. Could you see him on a board? Sure, but he’d have to lose the stripes. Would he have something to offer for both? I’m guessing yes.
This was the first book for both. They needed, as did Dr. Wayne Dyer, to get their face out and they did.
You are the face of your business. A book cover without your photo speaks just to your idea, which is great, but why not have it all? That’s why I urge my clients to go for the photo.
Finally, the answer to the title question.
Most everyone who comes to me has an idea for a title and they are wrong every time.
The title is the last thing you need decide on. The client does not know what their book is about. If everything goes according to their plan, I haven’t done my job.
As I like to tell them, if you write the book you planned to write, you wrote the wrong book. The experience of considering, cogitating, reassessing is crucial to getting the best book. That's what I do.
Wait until the book is written. Then name it. The wait will be worth it.