Since 2015, Write Business Results has helped publish books for over 300 authors, many of whom have had multiple Amazon bestsellers!
During this time, it’s safe to say that I’ve learnt a lot about the book writing process and the challenges business owners face when it comes to getting their message out to the masses.
Typically, the same issues tend to crop up over and over again.
This blog will look at some of the main challenges aspiring authors face, and will provide you with some essential tips to get your book off to a flying start!
Time is money
Before most aspiring authors actually start putting pen to paper, they have probably already done a great deal of thinking and worrying about where they are going to find the time to get started.
Most of them are business owners with barely enough time to eat lunch, let alone start writing a book!
Almost every author I’ve worked with has been in this situation before I spoke to them, and many got to the point where they started to believe that, maybe, they just weren’t cut out to be an author.
However, writing a book and sharing your message with the world doesn’t have to mean slaving away at a keyboard for hundreds of hours every month.
It just takes a bit of planning first.
And the best possible plans are the ones that link your goals to your audience’s goals and back again.
At Write Business Results, we do this in three key steps.
Step #1 – Finding out your “Why”
You need to figure out why you want to write your book in the first place and what your overall purpose is by publishing.
Is it to get more clients? Is it to educate your audience? Is it to increase your influence/reach in your industry?
Maybe it’s a combination of things, and if so, then great! However, you need to make sure you are crystal clear on what those things are before you start to write anything.
Step #2 – Knowing your commercial goals
To ensure you don’t get lost during the creation process, you need to be very clear on what sort of commercial benefits you want to receive within 12–24 months of publishing your book.
Some authors can feel a little bit awkward about having a business objective when all they want to do is help people, but in reality, that is still a goal that needs quantifiable metrics.
A good way to think about this is to list all of the goals you want to achieve from publishing your book and ask yourself:
“How am I going to know when I have reached those goals?”
If you are only focused on making an impact, how will you know when it’s working? Is it in a certain number of positive reviews? Is it through getting exposure in the press? Or would it be by having more people attend your events/training?
On the other hand, if your goal is revenue, you need to have clear markers for that too. What is the figure you want to make from this book? How many leads do you need in order to hit that figure?
Maybe you want more speaking opportunities to promote your brand. If so, what events do you want to speak at, and how many a year do you need?
Whatever your goals are, you need to work out exactly what you want to achieve from your book before starting it. If you don’t, it can be very easy to lose motivation and become distracted during the writing process.
In my experience, the people who fail to do this properly will run into the dreaded writer’s block 90% of the time!
Once you have clearly outlined your goals and your markers for success, you need to start thinking about for whom you are writing.
Step #3 – Identifying your ideal reader group
One mistake many new authors make is that they try too hard to write something for everybody rather than focusing on one particular niche.
However, by trying to please everyone, you’re actually going to end up appealing to no one.
That’s why it’s vital you think very carefully about who your ideal reader group will be and focus on them. These are the people who are really going to benefit from your message, and whom you’re going to be able to impact in a positive way.
I would always recommend creating two different reader groups when planning your book.
Treat your readers like your leads
Group A is your ideal reader, the type of person you need in order to deliver the commercial results you outlined earlier. Essentially, these readers are the same kind of people as the leads your business generates.
If you have a customer avatar/profile set up in your business already, that is a great place to start with reader group A! These are the people you want to make your primary focus.
Group B is a slightly broader group of people who, at some level, are interested in your message. They may not be paying customers, but they will still benefit from what you have to say and will be great for collecting reviews and some initial book sales.
That’s as broad as you want to go with your reader groups. It might feel as if you are leaving people out but trust me, you’re better off being a master of one thing than a jack-of-all-trades!
The more you dilute your message, the less impact it’s going to have on your readers.
If you’re not going to stand up for something, you’re not going to stand out as being the leader of anything. The whole point of writing a book is to commit to having a stance, so polarising when it comes to your reader avatar is a positive thing.
The best way to think about this is to treat your readers like leads. If you write in their language and solve their problems, you’re headed in the right direction!
Creating a reverse-engineered book that boosts your brand
So, before you even think about getting started on writing any content or getting anyone else to write content for you, you need to be very clear on your topic and the structure.
What’s going to help you decide those things is knowing exactly why you’re writing this book, for whom you’re writing it, and the specific commercial benefits you want to see as a result of publishing.
When you have that clarity, you can write a reverse-engineered book that will boost your personal brand and help you grow your business.
At Write Business Results, we take all of our clients through a step-by-step process called the Business Book Brief™, which extracts all of this information out of their heads by asking simple questions like those mentioned in this blog.
This process is responsible for starting all of the books we write which, on average, can return between £80,000–£120,000 in their first year of publishing!
In some cases, we’ve helped our authors to achieve seven and, in one instance, eight figure returns on investment.
And all that starts by knowing your why, setting your commercial goals and selecting your ideal reader group.
I hope you found this useful!
P.S. Are you currently thinking of writing a book or are you struggling with the one you’ve started?
If you are tired of banging your head against the wall, I might have just the thing for you.
Recently, Write Business Results launched an exciting new 60-minute training programme showing you how to write, launch and monetise your book using the same system responsible for all of our #1 bestsellers!
If you are interested in finding out how to get involved, just click the link below.
LEARN HOW TO CREATE, LAUNCH AND MONETISE YOUR BOOK – IN 90 MINUTES!
Happy writing! 🙂
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