11 Tips to Write A Book from a No-Name, First-Time Author

I started writing a book last summer. My coauthor, Steve Pacinelli, and I submitted the manuscript to Wiley last Thanksgiving. We released it in April 2019. We sold 15,000 copies by the end of the year.

Here are 11 things we learned along the way. And, as first-time authors, there was a lot to learn!

Qualifier 1: this is especially relevant to nonfiction business books (you know, the 200-page, 60,000-word kind), but applies beyond that.

Qualifier 2: This LinkedIn post is a lightweight version of a heavier blog post with more detail about every tip. Click here to read the full version of "11 Tips To Write A Book from a No-Name, First-Time Author."

I hope these ideas are of use and value to you. Feel free to reach out here on LinkedIn for more detail or clarity about any of them - or to share your experience writing, publishing, and selling a book! I'd love to hear from you.

1 FIND YOUR MOTIVATION

There are too many books being published every day to publish another that doesn't come from a place of clarity, purpose, intention, and motivation. For me, it was the fact that we've been pioneering the "relationships through video" movement with, through, and for the BombBomb community for a decade. It's the path to more effective and more satisfying work. And it's relevant to nearly anyone working in a professional capacity.

Rehumanize Your Business is a book that was needed, that didn't exist, and that no one else could write.

I undertook this massive effort to change people, to move people, and to create transformation. What is the deep, sincere, and powerful motivation behind you and your idea? You're going to need it.

2 JUST START WRITING

This point can't be overstated or further simplified: just start writing.

Do have an outline. Do know where you're going and why. But just start writing. You can't edit what isn't written.

The first 10,000 words of Rehumanize Your Business were written between 5am and 6am most weekday mornings and the better part of a Saturday or Sunday. I didn't know if it was a personal project or if it was a BombBomb project. I didn't know if or how it would get published. I just started writing.

Like any process, the writing process is iterative - it's not perfect from the start and you'll refine it as you go. But you have to start.

Note: my wife and son were extremely encouraging, supportive, and critical to starting writing.

Below: my son and me with the first copy of the book that we received ...

3 TALK WITH AUTHORS AND PUBLISHERS

Several thousand words into writing, two things became clear: 1) I didn't know the best way to write a book and 2) I didn't know the best way to bring a book to market.

So, I did the obvious thing: reached out to people I knew who wrote a book and who worked in publishing. Thanks here to:

• Dan Steinman (author of Customer Success)
• Kurt Bartolich (author of You Can't Ride Two Horses with One Ass)
• Thor Iverson (author of Y2K: Countdown to Launch)
• Chris Smith (author of The Conversion Code and Peoplework)
• Dave Crumby (author of REAL)
• Ryan Dunham (former VP of Sales, Zondervan and David C Cook)
• Andrew Stoddard (Editorial Director, WaterBrook & Multnomah)

If you're reading articles on LinkedIn, you have people in your network to talk with ... including me! There's no need to go it alone.

4 CREATE A WRITING PLAN

I talked with a person who took a couple of years to write his book. I also talked with a person who locked himself in a room, wrote 12 hours each day, and finished his book in under two weeks.

I spent about 5 months. Moving it from a "mornings and weekends" project to 60-70% of my day-to-day work at BombBomb helped.

To avoid distractions, I worked from home most of the time I was writing and even went and stayed at my parents' place in Grand Rapids, Michigan (I live and work in Colorado Springs, Colorado). To maintain awareness, I kept a spreadsheet with writing start and stop times and words written in that time to keep an eye on pace and overall progress.

To get done what's urgent, but not important, I recommend creating a deadline. Wiley did that for us.

Be sure to budget plenty of time for editing. I tried to submit a 70,000 word manuscript, but Wiley demanded I edit down to 60,000. It's a better book for that effort.

Where the book was written (a bootleg standing desk in my parents' home and a proper standing desk in my own home) ...

5 WRITE A PROPOSAL

Even if you're self-publishing, you want to write a proposal. It will get you clear on why the book should exist, who will buy it and read it, and why those people will do so. Even though he's got a publishing deal, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post bestselling author Daniel H. Pink writes proposals for every one of his books (per this great conversation with Tim Ferriss). Why? Clarity, purpose, and intention up front produce a better result in the end.

Our proposal was 43 pages long and followed a format shared with me by Chris Smith.

• Cover Page
• Book Overview
• Overview of the Concept and Why It Should Be a Book
• Who Would Buy and Why (TAM, Demographics, Psychographics)
• Table of Contents
• Comparable Titles
• Background on You, Your Company, and Your Community
• Marketing Plan (with Emphasis on Preorders and Launch)
• Sample Chapter
• Contact Information

We used this proposal in conversations with our two preferred publishing routes (see the next tip).

Below: what Daniel Pink says about Rehumanize Your Business (we didn't know him and used a simple, personal video in email to create the conversation).

6 CONSIDER YOUR PUBLISHING OPTIONS AND GO-TO-MARKET STRATEGY

Sales, marketing, customer success, leadership, management, product ... nearly anyone working in a professional capacity can benefit from Rehumanize Your Business and the philosophy and practice it teaches. So, we want to get it in front of tens of thousands of people.

My friend Kurt runs a branding agency and wrote his book for clients and prospective clients to understand his expertise and point of view, especially regarding brand conservation and brand research. He doesn't need or want to print or sell tens of thousands of copies.

My friend Sangram Vajre says of ABM is B2B in this conversation on The Customer Experience Podcast "This book is not for everybody. I'm not trying to be a New York Times bestseller." There are five to ten thousand people who should read that book and anyone who doesn't know what ABM and B2B mean are not those people.

Knowing who should buy and read your book, how many of those people there are, and ways to reach those people will help you decide how to bring your book to market - including your publisher.

We had conversations with Richard Narramore at Wiley (a 200-year-old, non-fiction specialist) and Justin Branch at Greenleaf Book Group (a 20-year-old, high-end, and hybrid self-publisher). Both are excellent humans with great opportunities for us and our book.

I created a business model for the project based on costs and royalties. We opted to go with Wiley for no upfront costs (but much lower royalty upside) and their brand (comparable titles, relevant to our ideal reader).

There are MANY options here. Some don't even require you to write anything (they'll write it for you!).

Any partner in bringing your book to market wants to lock down two things: 1) that the idea can sell and 2) that you can sell it! And let there be no confusion here: you have to sell your book. The strength of both of those will determine, in part, how many copies of your own book you might have to buy to mitigate the publisher's risk - especially if you're a no-name, first-time author like me.

A valuable resource: Ideas, Income, and Influence by Tanya Hall, CEO of Greenleaf Book Group.

Note: the bookstore photos in this post (more here) are thanks to our relationship with Wiley.

Below: Steve and me at Porchlight Book Company in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and with our editor Richard Narramore at Wiley in Hoboken New Jersey ...

7 FIND A COAUTHOR

Read the original blog post for more detail here (and for the other tips).

The short take: this project was easier and more fun and achieved a much better outcome by bringing Steve in early.

It's a forest/trees dynamic. I was deep in - writing and writing and writing. He was flying overhead - commenting, recommending, asking.

Having another person deeply involved introduces another perspective, voice, and skillset. He added a strong sales sensibility to the book and served as the reader's advocate.

Rehumanize Your Business would have been less fun and more academic a read without our partnership.

And writing is just one, small part of bringing a book into the world. We divide and conquer on speaking engagements, podcast appearances, and other sustaining efforts.

Below: Steve and me at Barnes & Noble, Fifth Avenue, New York City ...

8 READ YOUR BOOK ALOUD

Voicing your audiobook is a serious and important effort. Reach out to me if you want specific input here. What I'll offer in this post is that I wish I'd read the entire book aloud before submitting the manuscript.

Even if you don't release an audiobook, read your book aloud. Word for word. In full.

You'll find that even in a manuscript you'd read dozens or even hundreds of times there are minor errors like subject/verb disagreement or passages that don't read as well as they should.

Below: If you voice your audiobook in NYC, as we did, you'll likely get thirsty. We recommend Other Half in Brooklyn afterward ...

9 CREATE A SALES LAUNCH

Again, you have to sell your book. Your marketing plan is part of your publishing deal.

We used a variety of strategies and tactics to create preorders and opening week purchasing, but the most effective ... emails and social posts that said "we have a book for sale, here's why and how to buy it."

We also created preorder incentives at these purchasing levels: 1-2, 3-4, 5-9, 10-24, 25-99, 100-499, 500-999, and 1,000+. We had great activity at all of the levels except 500-999 - and we did have one person purchase 1,000 (thanks again, Tom!).

Click here to see our tiered incentive packages.

Click here to see a video training series we created for the launch (it's still useful today!).

We sold nearly 10,000 copies from perorder through the first week of release (late April 2019). I've not done a great job sustaining the sales effort (just over 5,000 more through the end of 2019).

Selling a book can be a full-time job, but I don't have that privilege.

Below: Rehumanize Your Business at Tattered Cover Bookstore locations at Denver International Airport ...

10 DON'T BET ON A BESTSELLER

With 10,000 copies sold for the release, we figured we had a shot at a USA Today or Wall Street Journal bestseller list. I expect that bulk purchasing (like the dozens, hundreds, or even a thousand we sold at a time) was a bit beneath the curators of the lists. I get it. It's more impressive to sell those copies to 9,500 buyers than to 4,500.

We did land in the top 20 with Barnes & Noble for the opening week of release and at #1 with Porchlight Book Company for the opening month of release. I highly recommend working with Porchlight (formerly 800-CEO-READ). They've been handling bulk purchasing of nonfiction books for decades. We ran all our large orders through them.

Pro Tip: keep an eye on Amazon. They update sales hourly. Find your book's categories and screenshot the rankings.

During preorder and launch, we hit #1 in Amazon Hot New Releases in several categories like Business Sales, Business Communication, and Customer Relations. From there, we hit #1 in Amazon Best Sellers in several of the same categories. They'll tag your book #1 New Release and #1 Best Seller. But it's fleeting, so capture it.

Below: Examples of Amazon ranking and tagging by category ...

11 ASK FOR REVIEWS (AGAIN)

Think about the way you purchase products on Amazon, consider restaurants on Yelp or Google, or look for help on Angie's List or HomeAdvisor. You're looking at both the quality and quantity of reviews. It's important that we continue to push to get it up over 100.

The way we ran our preorder incentives allowed us to get email addresses of known purchasers so we could 1) stop marketing to them and 2) kindly ask them for Amazon reviews.

Get email addresses. Ask kindly for reviews. Then ask again. Even people who love you and love your book need a reminder.

Pro Tip: Ask specifically. For example, Please click here to leave a 4- or 5-star review and share two or three things you learned by reading the book.

Below: Rehumanize Your Business, my son, and me at Barnes & Noble, Clybourn Place, Chicago ...

IN CLOSING

Steve and I received so much love, support, help, and guidance over the past 18 months. Thanks to everyone who supported this project and who read the book.

If you want to write a book, but have further questions, just reach out to me here on LinkedIn.

If you wrote a book and have further ideas and experiences to share with me, please reach out here on LinkedIn!

Click here to learn what's inside Rehumanize Your Business.

Click here to order a hardcover, digital, or audiobook copy.

Click here to watch a keynote presentation that goes more behind the scenes of the process.

Click here to see a blog post and episode of The Customer Experience Podcast about the process.

Click here to review the book's companion website with bonus content.

Thanks so much for giving this a read! I hope you found it helpful.