Do you ever struggle to do something you know how to do, and should be easy, at least that is the way it seems, but never get past the first hurdle.

I do. Disturbingly often.

For some years I have toyed with writing a book, becoming one of those liberated by the web to publish and perhaps generate a return from what I know, the experience I have gathered in a long commercial life.

There are several started lying around, rough drafts, notes, chapter outlines, all the stuff I know I have to do to complete something that may be of value.

I have written 2 or three blog posts every week for many years. I collect lots of ideas, stories, and metaphors from clients, reading, and just rubbing my belly thinking about stuff.

How hard could it be to pull all that together in a book?

Very hard it seems, even when pushed by some of those who know me well.

If I was my own consultant, there would be some tough love and bum-kicking going on.

Like any project, there are a small number of key questions to be asked, and answered which provides a framework for the task, then some logical steps to be taken.

Key questions:

• Who is it for? The core marketing question, who is it that you want to reach and influence to do what? In the absence of a clear answer, the result will be, at best, muddled. Luckily, I know exactly who I should be writing for.
• Why should they care? If you expect people to spend money to buy the thing, then invest the time to read it, there had better be a good reason that they should, and that needs to be convincingly communicated.  Again, 25 years of contracting and consulting have given me a pretty good idea of the sort of knowledge and experience I can deliver that will increase the commercial sustainability of the SME manufacturers who are my ‘sweet spot’.

Logical steps:

• Nail the title, and subtitle. The title is in effect the headline for the book ad. It needs to convey in a few words the objective and drama of the book, provide a ‘hook’ for the intended reader. For the writer, it is the equivalent of the strategic purpose, the question to be asked continuously through the whole book ‘is this taking is closer to the objective?”
• Write the back cover. This should be the distilled sales pitch to those you want to reach. Often you will see this as an introduction, which to my mind is wasting the reader’s attention when it is the most curious, right at the beginning.  Explain the value to be gained from reading the book, and how will they use this new knowledge? Ideally, this can be written by a third party, someone with real street cred, so it sounds less like self-promotion. I do not really know many people in the category. The one who would have been ideal, my original and great mentor Harvard professor James Hagler, has been sadly gone for some years.
• Write the Chapter list. This is the skeleton of the book, the bones from which everything hangs. A few sentences that specifically articulate what knowledge will be imparted in each chapter acts as an anchor around which the words and stores can be built. This requires creative thought, as most people will read the chapter list before buying the book, so the more interesting, differentiated, and engaging the better.
• Write the draft, of at least 1 or 2 chapters, They will be awful, discouraging, but out if it will come the ‘voice’ that you want to use for your audience, and the structure of the chapters. One person I know wrote their whole book as draft, it worked for him, but the added work after the draft completion to redraft the whole thing when he recognised it was rubbish was almost the end.
• Edit, edit and re-edit. Then get someone else outside to have a shot.  Better if the outsider is on side from the beginning and giving the bad news progressively so you can improve as you go, rather than all at once when the draft you have is in your mind, complete. It is hard to kill off those parts into which you have poured your sweat after the words have dried too hard on the page, and in your mind.
• Marketing. Then there is the marketing and operational stuff of necessary to get it out there. Worrying about that too soon is just distracting, plenty of time at the end, and plenty of advice and options around on the best way forward.  However, if you are writing the book to make money from the sales, it is entirely different to the situation where you are writing it for credibility, leading to consulting assignments, and perhaps speaking gigs. These two objectives for the book require entirely different marketing strategies.
• Do it, now. Stop thinking about it, and take action. Now.

Note to self: Read the blog, and take action as advised!

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