How to Write and Publish a Book

10 Lessons from Launching my first book, and the post mortem.

 The first story I ever wrote was titled “Mi hombre Dominicano” - an ode to someone I met and was heart broken by in 2008. I can remember my friends laughing so hard at my updates. I don’t even remember the work I was doing at the time; exploring culture was the main thing that drove me time and time again to leave my home and travel the world for months on end. 

I spent many nights alone, when colleagues and friends were off to talk to family, and in those moments, I became an author and narrator of my own journey, and gained a PHD in self.

 Last Friday 29th July I was losing my mind. I came so very close to having the number 1 best seller in 3 countries, but remained at the door for hours, eventually thinking I would never do it, until I eventually did. I was # 2 in the UK, # 4 in the US, and # 5 in Brazil. I’d already been promoting the book for 3 months. I couldn’t believe I could come so close, and walk away without the number 1 best seller ranking ever having been achieved! 

 Writing your first book should never give you the expectation of a number 1 but for one simple yet powerful thing; The first launch is the launch that will gather the most support from your existing friends, family and business associate network, and it’s worth taking the time to engage them in the process. 

 In the end, my launch achieved the following outcomes:

Number 1 Best Sellers

# 1 Career Guide UK

Other Best Sellers (UK and / or US )

# 2 in Environmentalist/ Naturalist

# 2 in Political Leadership

# 4 in Green Business

# 4 in Vocational Guides

# 4 in Change Management

# 5 in foreign language books (Brazil)

New Releases

# 1 in Career Guides (UK & US)

# 1 in Job Hunting (UK & US)

# 1 in Human Resource Management (UK)

# 1 in Vocational Guidance (US)

# 1 in Environmentalists / Naturalist (US)

# 1 in Decision Making (UK)

# 1 in Mentoring & Coaching (UK)

# 1 in Ethics (US)

# 4 in business leadership skills (UK)

Here’s how I did it.

Lesson 1 - The Design Stage.

Decide upfront on these fundamental questions:

• What do you want the book to do for your business/ professional credibility?
• Who is your ideal audience/ reader?
• What doors could it open?
• Which of those doors are you prepared to walk through?
• What existing assets do you have that you can leverage in this book?

As with any project, anticipation of what comes next is key to fulfilling the mission in your writing and design. I will share more about my long term goals in a later article, but focusing on the process, there’s a lot to unpack in how to set up for success.

At the conception of this book, I was looking for something quick and - well, not quite dirty, but efficient. I wanted to create a simple emotionless career guide that ticked all the boxes without any extra spice. 

As I started writing, I realised that if it has my name on it, there’s no way my personality isn’t going to be inside. My original idea was flawed. “Besides, why would anyone want to read something that’s devoid of personality?” - the truth is perhaps many people, but for me this was not on. It’s somewhere between knowing your market and who you want to work with, and knowing where you can deliver your best magic. 

I should have gone back to the drawing board then, but instead I tried to fit myself into a dry canvas, and it became a mess to manage. In the end, this extended my rewrite time, but being committed to quality the book is an excellent read.

 Lesson 2 - Develop the Perfect Outline.

- After your first outline, take a break, and spend a lot of time on how you want your audience to feel when you write something, what actions they need to take, and then revisit your outline.

Clarity in the feelings you want people to have when they are reading your work is important from the first word. In the case of Do What Matters, I wanted people to feel like they’re having a chat with their quirky best friend. I hope that comes across for everyone.

Ask yourself at the end of the outline:

Is it doing the job?

If not, re-work it until it does. go as many times as it takes. It will be time better spent than fixing it at the end.

 Lesson 3 - Decide on your team.

 If you’ve never written a book before, I absolutely recommend having a book coach - not a formula, but someone to help you really elicit the story you want to tell. You should hire them at lesson 0 to be honest, luckily I did hire one to get me started and it was an excellent choice. Here are all the other skills you may need for a successful launch, whether you decide to give this work to an agency, a team of freelancers, or do it all yourself. You can do DIY, but you will need to give yourself a lot more time to get through the project.

 1 - Book coach - to help elicit the difference you specifically make in contributing on your chosen topic.

2 - Research assistant - to support in-depth research, interviews, and survey production and distribution as required by your topic.

3 - SEO specialist - to ensure some keywords and phrases make their way in to every written part of the work

4 - Proof-reader - to help safeguard a coherent reading experience.

5 - Project manager - to coordinate all the pieces, and keep everyone on the pulse and to the timelines. 

6 - Public Relations professional - to plan, strategise and support the execution of PR opportunities.

7 - Social Media Manager - to plan, strategise and execute marketing and promotions.

8 - Commercial Editor - to manage the seamlessness, message delivery and impact of the book on the reader.

9 - Graphic Designer - to deliver the book’s energy and message in a simple image, for someone scanning thumbnails.

10 - Formatting to fit the different upload formats on different platforms.

11 - Availability management - managing ISBN registrations, upload on various sites depending on approach, as well as category management, pricing, and all of these market availability topics.

12 - Review team - people you trust who will tell you like it is, and who have gravitas and weight of their own to comment on whether the book is good or not, based on their lived experiences.

13 - Photographer - your marketing campaign will need loads of stills, of both the product, the author and the process. Make sure to capture them all.

14 - Videographer - more and more is being communicated today through video, and Tik Tok is the home of micro learning on any topic, so you will want to get your book and book story on platforms like this, Instagram and LinkedIn with micro learning bites. 

15 - Booking agent - someone to support you being invited as a guest speaker for prominent free, or paid gigs.

16 - Depending on your affinity for writing, you can also hire a ghost-writer. This changes the way you set up the story, as this person will probe with questions, but it is a valid alternative.

Of the list above during my process, I personally did all or part of  eight of the roles. For my next book, I’m definitely approaching it differently.

Lesson 4  - Decide on your quality control standards

What’s your voice, tone, pitch, and impact in each page of the book? Establishing clearly what you are going for makes it easier for your editors to preserve this as they go through your work, and it eases some frustration for you, because you have a map to follow.  

If you get this right, your ideal reader would not be able to put the book down. Get it wrong,  and your book will get stuck at the same part of the book in every ereader around the world, and you’ll be wondering why you didn’t resolve this before.

Consider accessibility of your language, particularly if you want to connect with an international audience who may not be native English speakers.

Consider responsibility in your language. Diversity, equity and inclusion impacts us all, as we all experience some form of privilege, in one way or another, that often makes us blind to the suffering of others.      

Lesson 5 - Research

Be sure to leave enough time, and actually outline the depth of research you want to do for each chapter. Fortunately this book didn't need too much because it is essentially about my own methodology, but a book is stronger for external sources of trust, so be sure to establish these trust sources throughout. 

Research includes desktop work, ethnography, interviews, surveys and other methods. One thing that proved helpful for me, is that I already had a well researched product in my portfolio that I could leverage for the book. Where Ideas Launch - The Sustainable Innovation podcast is filled with expert guidance and insight, and sharing perspectives of my guests, helped to deliver the message I intended.

Lesson 6 - Managing the writing journey

Most book coaches recommend that you write the whole book, finish it, then begin the editing. In reality I left so much time between sittings, and didn’t do a detailed enough outline upfront, so I ended up going back over the start of the book many more times than the end. Making tweaks, even little ones, of the same thing over and over again is a massive time suck in a book process, so this needs some discipline and structure so you can avoid it. Time-sucks like this almost guarantee you get bored with your project before it’s over, so be weary of that.

From all that I’ve learned from book 1, this is my new writing plan for book 2

• 1 month on the book plan.
• 1 month of research to support the plan.
• 2 months on the writing, targeting a daily schedule, a chapter every 2 days.
• 1 month on my first edit
• 1 month for beta readers.
• 2 months to edit after beta readers, with a commercial editor
• 1 month for early reviewers
• Launch.

 Lesson 7 - Beta Readers

My biggest personal failure (read that to mean massive improvement opportunity) was managing the reviews. I think I had this running fantasy that I would write a bestseller in one go. 

Alternatively though, my best decision in this whole process was in the choice of my beta readers. I cannot tell you how grateful I am to Vinitha Johnson and Shane Ward. Just invaluable the time they spent to coach / give direct specific and constructive feedback.

I didn’t even realise there was such a thing as a beta reader until their feedback came in. I realised that what I thought was an early review process, was actually a lab Q&A situation that I needed to be more prepared for. Definitely, get an excellent set of beta readers on your project because they show you holes you can’t see when you're caught up in the story.

Lesson 8 - Proofing and Editing

Confession. I didn't know there was a difference between Proofing and Editing until I started editing. Now I know I need 2 proofing runs and one solid editorial run. One proofing run should happen before the beta reviewers receive it, and another before the early reviewers receive it. 

Commercial editing is also something I knew in my gut I needed, but I still thought I could get by without until the first round of Beta feedback came in. Now I’ve experienced the value it brings, I will never go without one. The commercial editor aims to capture the reader, the key bits of the story telling, and make it easy for someone to see why they need to keep turning pages.

Lesson 9 - Marketing 

This is so huge it demands its own article, and it will receive it. The key thing I want to put here is that your first book is all about your friends, family, and other fans in your life.  That’s what gets you the platform to launch the second one, where you can build new audiences borrowing credibility from your first book. Marketing is an absolute beast, and needs all the respect you can give it, because attracting the right customer base for the book is vital. 

Lesson 10 Public Relations

No book launch is worth it without a PR campaign to support the amplification of your message and voice, and strategically positioning you and your business for bigger things. You want to prepare this also in the planning stage. Know who you want to talk to where, because it will help with the semi-organic reach, and general appetite for whatever you plan to do next.

Stay tuned for the next piece when I get into Marketing and PR for Advocacy. I hope these 10 lessons allow you to ponder if this could be the next best opportunity for your business.