1. Are you passionate about your topic, your book?
Your words are you. That’s a huge investment in itself. You’ve got to love what you are creating. Really care for it. Do you? It’s like the difference between your job and your work … a job is a job, hopefully it pays the bills. But work? It’s part of your fabric, who you are. And when you love your work, passion enters the scene.

2. Is being in control important to you?
If you want your book cover to look a certain way; the interiors to have a specific presentation style; the paper to look or feel a certain way; the fonts to be of a definite type; the editing to be done your way that allows feedback; and to make input into the marketing strategies, control is important. With traditional publishers, you become a royal pain in the tush. Others may not give you options as well.

3. Is it important that your topic gets published within the next 4 to 6 months?
If your book needs to be available within the year, the odds are that it won’t happen with a traditional publisher. Normally, a book is published approximately 18 months after a publisher signs the author.

4. Do you have the time to commit to your book project?
Creating a successful book takes time—lots of it. It’s not just the writing. It’s the book production that takes time and then all the post production marketing, which can go on for many, many months. If you want to be successful, you’ve got to become myopic at times and prioritize in favor of your book.

5. Do you want your covers to look a certain way?
We know of few authors from the traditional publishing world that are enamored with their book covers. Cover control is like a parent withholding the family car keys from a teenager. It’s power—publishers, and their marketing departments, often have fixed ideas that are in cement when it comes to covers. We know, we’ve had our share that we sometimes wanted to put a brown wrapper on. When we started publishing our own books, we liked the covers. So should you.

6. Is it important to have a quality looking book?
One of our friends had a book published in 2009 with a major publisher and did a visual comparison with another book published with the same publisher in 1984. The difference was amazing. The quality of the paper in the new version was thinner—it displayed the ink print on the other side; the quality of the cover in the older book—it laid flat. The newer one was already morphing open. The book that was 25 years old was in better shape than the book hot off the press. If the quality of how your book looks, feels and holds up is important, traditional, as well as other publishing options, may not work for you.

7. Are you willing to make mistakes, and correct them?
Every author makes mistakes. Every author turned publisher makes them. Can you forgive yourself? Can you ID from where the error was generated? Can you self-correct and redirect yourself?

8. Do you have the financial resources to support your book, and you?
You have to decide whether you are a hobbyist or casual author publisher, or ready to dive in and publish-publish. As a hobbyist, you will go the print-on-demand (POD) route for minimal moneys ($500 to $1500). But, as a serious author-publisher, you must be ready to invest several thousand dollars. Editors, designers and printers all add up. However, if you are successful, you can make an excellent return. It all goes back to passion, time, commitment, strategy and marketing.

Reprinted from “Rick Frishman‘s Author101 Newsletter”
Subscribe at http://www.rickfrishman.com and receive Rick’s “Million Dollar Rolodex”

I often hear CEOs saying that as the market has been so badly hit by the recession, they can’t really afford to take time out to write a book. My response is quite simply, you can’t afford not to! It’s precisely when times get tough that customers start scrutinising their purchases and looking for the best value for their money. In a market that is already competitive, shrinking demand means fewer pounds flowing around, and those pounds will go to the exceptional companies, those that stand out.

I write this because time and time again I see truly inspirational thought leaders lurking in the shadows when they should be up their on their soapbox, demonstrating why they are the leading light in their field.

In a downturned market, executives should be making a big impact by being bold and opiniated in order to stand out in an increasingly competitive environment. Business leaders and executives need to be able to share experiences and knowledge and more importantly be able to share their wisdom and views on key issues within the market if they are to rise above their competition.

Quite simply, if you don’t have have a speaking, writing and publishing strategy, you are not fulfilling your responsibility as leaders. In the current economic climate you need to be bold and opinionated and if not, well you simply shouldnt even bother.

No ghostwriting please!

Customers want to hear the executive’s own beliefs, in his/her own words. This doesn’t mean CEOs should go out and look for a ghostwriter to do the hard work from them though! It’s a common misconception that using a ghostwriter will save a significant amount of time. To achieve a really accurate portrayal of the topic, the executive would need to spend time briefing the writer, then looking at various drafts making comments and amendments and reviewing it again.

With the right plan, structure, techniques and guidance, anyone can write a great book in as little as 40 hours. If an executive is not willing to invest 40 hours in strategic thinking, planning and writing, I would have my doubts about his/her leadership and vision in the first place.

Marketing is not enough!

It is impossible to delegate the critical task of thought leadership to your marketing department. Differentiation can obviously be achieved with marketing, but to get real competitive advantage, a CEO needs to get vocal as well. What we need is REAL thought leadership, which asserts the executive’s views and opinions on important issues and provides a vision that inspires confidence in that company.

Think about the business leaders that stand out in your mind. Chances are, they have been writing, speaking and quoted in the market. Being visible and vocal is the only way to raise your credibility and stand out from the crowd. It goes beyond strategic marketing, this way you get your own voice heard. It shows faith in yourself and your brand and that is very attractive to a customer.

What we need is real thought leadership, which asserts the executive’s views and opinions on important issues and provides a vision that inspires confidence in that company.

There was much said about Barack Obama’s presidential election and what is was about him that made him so likeable to the public. As time had passed, much of that same character is still there, although shades have been influenced by the practical day to day realities of his tenure. But ultimately, it was his openness and willingness to be vulnerable that helped people to relate to him and see him as a trusted leader in way that others had failed to do. He was prepared to be bold and opinionated and ruffle the feathers of others to stand up for what he believed was right.

It is this kind of boldness that will carry others towards their successes, if they are willing to embrace it.

It’s all very well writing an article for a magazine, but how can you find out whether your message is engaging the right people and having the desired impact? Executive communications specialist Mindy Gibbins-Klein suggests that the first step to successful communication is accepting that writing very likely to be a one-way approach, at least at first…

A business colleague said something astounding the other day. He said he would rather speak to an audience of ten people than write for an audience of a thousand. I thought that sounded a bit strange, so I challenged him on it. It turned out that he had written an article for a magazine with a good circulation, but he hadn’t had any feedback at all from it. He felt he had spent his time crafting a wonderful, informative piece that no one appreciated. He also felt that if that message had been delivered in person, he could have seen the response from people immediately, in their eyes and their body language.

It’s true, what my colleague said, so how can we justify putting time into writing when we don’t get feedback? That, my friend, is the nature of writing. Sometimes you get to find out what your readers think of your material, and many times you don’t. It’s my view that we have to be OK with the fact that writing is one-way until we get a response, and we must continue to put good material into the market. There are some excellent guidelines for one- way communication that I have seen business experts use to their advantage. Here are my favourites:

1. Keep your outcome in mind at all times.

Hone your message according to what you have to say as well as what your reader needs to hear and decide what kind of information you are imparting. For example, if you need to teach people with your writing, you may choose a different style from writing which aims to influence or persuade. Make whatever you write clear.

2. Deliver your message as passionately and authentically as if you were speaking.

I prefer to see writing as an extension of speaking, and in fact, for people who will not get the opportunity to hear you in person or even on the phone, your writing must do the same job. It has become very trendy to write conversationally, spurred on by the advent of blogging and newsletters. That style can be used effectively in books and articles as well. It’s no secret that one of my favourite authors is marketing guru Seth Godin. I love the in-your- face, direct style he uses. It feels like he’s in my living room talking to me one on one. It seems from his book sales that others also respond to that style. And it happens to be the way I prefer to write, in case you hadn’t noticed!

3. Get feedback.

That may sound like it contradicts what I said earlier. Actually, there are some clever mechanisms to get people interacting with you, even though you are not there. You can get them to go to a web page and complete a survey – with or without an incentive. You can put an email address at the bottom of the piece, asking for comments – again, with or without an incentive. This can work equally well for books. I get a lot of clients excitedly planning to include CDs with their books, until I show them how they can still give away free CDs and capture people contact details and feedback at the same time. Never include bonuses with your book when you could engage with readers and get some indication of how many people read it and liked it at the same time. That’s plenty for you to be getting on with. If you know your subject and deliver your message well, if you write powerfully and authentically, they will listen. And they may even respond. Let me know all about your success by writing to me at mindy@bookmidwife. com – I offer lots of fabulous bonuses for my readers

While I was at the London Book last April, one lady stood up and gave a seminar on how there were an ‘awful lot of bad books out there’. Another said that more and more writers are now expected to bear more of the risk – and even go as far as to complete their books without getting paid themselves.

I feel really sorry for these people; I can’t tell you what a shame this is. It seems some authors are still not in the 21st Century when it comes to getting their books out there. When you think about the flat or falling book sales figures, the rising cost of production, add to this the uncertainty inherent in the industry, is it any wonder that publishers are reining in the budgets and take fewer risks?

As a publisher myself, I don’t have a problem with authors taking a risk. What I do have a problem with is the arrogance and condescending nature of some publishing people who still believe that they get to be ‘gatekeepers’, deciding which books deserve to be published and which don’t. One former publisher present at the seminar said “there were an awful lot of bad books that did not need to exist”.

The strap line at The Book Midwife for several years has been “Every Book Deserves to Be Written and Published”. I have never said ‘bad books’ deserve to be bought, read or liked. I just said we shouldn’t deny people the right to get their books into print.

I thought – wrongly, as it turns out – that people in the publishing industry were finally beginning to realize the benefits of democratic and open publishing, creating more opportunities for all. Self-publishing, cooperative or partnership publishing, publishing on the web – these are the vehicles which have allowed more people than ever to get their thoughts and ideas into the market.

So I am calling people everywhere. Business Owners, Entrepreneurs, Working Mums, First Time Writers, and even Second Time Writers that were unsuccessful at the publishers. If there is a book in you, let’s find it and get it out into the market. Happy writing!

Mindy Gibbins-Klein MBA FRSA is best known as founder of The Book Midwife® and co-founder and director of Ecademy Press. Her clients have successfully written and published more than 300 books and hundreds of bold and opinionated articles, positioning themselves as real thought leaders in their field. Mindy is an international speaker and thought leadership strategist. Her latest book 24 Carat BOLD: The Standard for REAL Thought Leaders (£10.99, Ecademy Press) outlines the four attributes found in true thought leaders. Mindy herself is a successful author, co-writing Amazon best seller BusinessWise, A Dance in the Desert and an ebook on self-publishing.

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No publisher should be without this highly readable, nuts-and-bolts guide to the ins and outs of book publishing. The Midpoint team has more than a century of combined book publishing experience, which will prove invaluable to all publishers, from seasoned professionals to those new to the game. The book concisely discusses the editorial process, design, printing, pricing, sales and distribution, marketing and publicity. It also includes success stories from authors, publishers, and others in the industry who relate the strategies that helped them rocket their books to bestseller status.

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