How Writing a Book Saves You a Massive Amount of Time (Part 2)

We’re talking about how a book saves you a massive amount of time.

So this might seem an odd question, bear with me.

Should your first book be a hardback or a paperback?

To answer, let me tell you that our current flagship title, You Should Write a Book, is out in hardback now and we will promote this edition for about a year.

And then we’ll issue it as a paperback. So that next year there’s another opportunity for promotion.

You’ve also got to think about an ebook edition. On Kindle for instance.

(Like my friend Gabriella Braun who just published All That We Are in two formats. By the way, her book has been described as one of the most important books about the workplace ever published. So check it out. You’ll be surprised.)

Why an ebook, though?

Well, a lot of people now are reading on Kindles, so there’s a momentum there.

And some people will – no doubt – be influenced by the cheaper price. (It’s about half the price of the hardback after all.)

There’s one other version of your book you should think about.

You should also consider releasing your book as an audio book.

Again, why?

Well, audiobooks comprise one of the largest and fastest growing segments of the publishing market – particularly among those who are listening to audiobooks while running, or in the gym, or commuting.

So what are we really talking about here?

Bites at the cherry. We’re talking bites at the cherry.

And – get this – for minimal extra time and effort.

Different formats attract different readers at different times

You might be wondering why offering multiple formats is such a significant strategy for authors today?

The answer is that these different formats of your book will attract different kinds of reader at different times.

And the effect of this?

Well, over the next year or two, these new editions – as they become available at different times – can keep your book (and therefore you, your ideas and your business) front and centre of people’s attention.

Because we’re living in the Attention Age where the very little time we each have left is extremely precious.

(Perhaps we should call it the Lack of Attention Age? Just a thought.)

And yet the core manuscript at the heart of your portfolio – your hardback, your paperback, your ebook and your audiobook – is only one piece of work.

Think about that in the context of saving time.

Four media forms, each having a two to three-year lifespan (perhaps longer), and yet all created from a single piece of work.

That’s thought provoking.

There’s an instructive thing to add here, about your workflow as an author.

Your writing workflow should start with capturing video

The way my wife and business partner, Jacqueline Moore, and I generally work is to create video content first. From a book interview on Zoom (or face-to-face), from a speech you've given, or from an animated slidedeck presentation.

Then we rip off the mp3 track. When I say rip off I mean to extract the soundtrack as an mp3 file. (It’s a technical term. Really.)

You can then put that audio file on Apple Podcasts or Spotify as a podcast, or a portion of a podcast. (Yes, you too can be on Spotify! That’s another great search engine where people are looking to solve their problems – and when they do they’ll find you.)

You can also transcribe the mp3 files. You can get an hour’s interview transcribed in just a few minutes, for just a few dollars, using a software platform called Temi – at temi.com. That’s a brilliant service.

Together these different forms of media give you an enormous number of bites at the attention cherry.

One more time, how can you streamline your writing workflow?

If you can get the implications of a streamlined media creation workflow you will be in seventh heaven.

So, one more time, your workflow for creating books should be to...

1)????carry out video interviews with people, which as well as providing the core of your book, you can post as behind-the-scenes videos if you like – that’s a YouTube channel right there, for no extra effort.

2)????take off the mp3s and post those – that’s an Apple or Spotify podcast right there, for no extra effort.

3)????transcribe the podcasts – and publish them as transcripts to support your podcasts – which is a rich website right there, for no extra effort.

4)????polish the transcripts and publish them as articles on social media (Medium, for example) or your blog – that’s a LinkedIn newsletter right there, for no extra effort.

So all of this material you’re creating comes from just a few hours’ work conducting the essential interviews for your book.

Want a bonus? When your collateral media appears on your podcast or blog or YouTube channel, you can see what response the ideas get. Instant feedback!

Create a multimedia training program from your interviews

The other thing to consider – if you do a lot of interviews – is you might bundle those interviews together to create a training program.

A couple of years ago, for instance, we did a weekly livestream, one a week for 12 weeks, recording every step of how we published our most recent book. It was a unique, over-the-shoulder glimpse at exactly how we wrote and published the book.

We were surprised when people told us just how much they got from that. So we’ve published the 12 hours of video as a complete training program. And then we’ll turn that into another book, to follow You Should Write A Book. (Keep Calm and Write Your Book, anyone?)

Why another book about writing books?

Well, You Should Write A Book is about why you should write a book, and the reasoning behind writing a book. Keep Calm and Write A Book, on the other hand, is a how book, it’ll have all the practical details, exactly as we experienced them.

So what you’ll begin to find is that – like us –?you will start creating content that is central to your business. It’s not that you’re creating a bolt-on piece of extra content, just to fill a content calendar.

No, writing a book, with all it’s spin-off content – spinning off naturally, by the way – becomes central to what you do.

Think about that.

What a massive amount of time you just saved.

Your book is your business

I would say that for anybody in the knowledge business, if you manage this knowledge process strategically, then your book will inevitably become your business.

Because it’s driving value creation for your core audience.

Whether that’s people you want to train or consult with, or people you want to inspire, or people you’re trying to serve in some other way.

It’s not that your business is captured in a book. Instead, your book becomes your business.

In other words, for example, instead of writing a blog and then trying to edit all the content and force it into some unnatural shape, you create the book first.

People sometimes describe the first method as ‘blogging your book’. David Meerman Scott does this and to some extent Professor Lynda Gratton. (I’m thinking of her new book Redesigning Work here. About which more later.)

Instead, I would say, ‘books build blogs’. In other words, the blog posts come second. They come from the book. Even if they’re published before the book ever sees the light of day.

The outcome of this?

Everything that you create – to share knowledge, or serve clients, or market your business – becomes strategic. It’s focused on the problem that you’re trying to solve for your readers.

The world’s best-known consultancy, McKinsey, describes this as ‘we are all publishers now’.

This is an important McKinsey nugget.

The firm goes further: we need to streamline how we create marketing content, it says, and we need to cut the costs of this process.

Writing your book is a great solution to this conundrum.

They wrote a great paper on this, by the way, which you should checkout on the McKinsey website, Four Ways to Get More Value from Digital Marketing.

Your book keeps you front of mind

Returning to the question of hardback, paperback, or audiobook? Well, they’re just elements of keeping your vision and your story in front of your audience’s eyes.

Because, ultimately, a book helps you to ‘be everywhere now’ on the project you’re currently involved in.

For example, if you Google my name, I’m all over the internet. And frankly, for the last year, it’s been just this one project, helping people write books. So the book is our (publishing) business. But it’s come from a core of just 20 hours of brilliant interviews.

A book is at the heart of this project, too, our LinkedIn newsletter. Another book helped us share our knowledge in the facilities management industry. A different book again – The Seven Failings of Really Useless Leaders – helped us serve the human resources community.

And recently we’ve been doing a few even more interesting projects. We’ve been writing legacy books, for instance.

A young student of mine sadly passed away too young. I wrote about him last time. The book was called The CEO’s Journey, and we gave away our rights to the royalties to the young man’s family.

It was a terrible situation, but a wonderful experience, to help other people to go through the difficult grieving process. And to achieve something wonderful as a result.

Publishing a book is about making a real difference for years to come

So remember this: publishing a book is not just about the commercial aspects. It is about making a difference.

It is, through your words, creating an enduring legacy of work that will touch people for years to come. Your book becomes a real business asset, in the financial sense of the term.

So, then, there are all sorts of different reasons to write books. But if you’re in the knowledge business, writing and publishing a book should be a central part of how you communicate your values and vision to the world. No doubt about it.

But how do you actually do this? How do you bring together the persuasive elements you need and combine them into an influential book?

We’re out of time right now, but it’s important, so we’ll look at how you make your book persuasive next time.

THE STORY SO FAR

• Make your book available in different formats (hardback, paperback, ebook, audiobook) so that different people can find you at different times.
• Remember that every book edition comes from one original manuscript.
• In your workflow prioritize creating video content for maximum flexibility.
• From the original video content strip off the audio, transcribe it and edit the results to create multiple posts (audio, edited transcript, article).
• Then post your spinoff content to some or all of these platforms: YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, LinkedIn, and Medium among others.
• Do everything you can to be everywhere now, but DO NOT create masses of new material – instead repurpose your emerging book content. (This also ensures everything is strategic.)

NEXT TIME: what are the essential things you need to include in your book to make it persuasive and influential?

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For transparency, this article will also be published on the blog at the Authors Channel .