To start booking more and better speaking engagements write a book

If you want to get hired for speaking engagements – fast – you need to do just one thing.

Publish a book.

Fast.

What’s fast?

In the next 12 months, if possible.

But first, if you’d like to watch this as a video, click here now.

It’s from the livestream Q&A a few weeks back.

HAVING A BOOK IS YOUR GOLDEN TICKET

You probably know that writing and publishing a book is the easiest way to get an invitation to speak anywhere, on any topic.

It’s a Golden Ticket to speaking invitations.

Which Maitri O’Brien found just days after publishing her first book The New Leaders of Change.

And if you manage things well, you’ll also be well paid for your keynote.

Though payment doesn’t actually matter. (Really.)

It’s what happens after you speak that matters.

More about that later.

By the way, if you’re an entrepreneur – a business owner, for example, or a lawyer, or a financial services professional – a book will also help you to win over the best clients and customers you’ve ever worked with.

All of which means – if you saw my last article –?that giving your book to a mainstream publisher is no use to you whatsoever.

THE PROBLEM OF GIVING YOUR BOOK TO A MAINSTREAM PUBLISHER

Here’s the bad news from last time.

Giving your book to a traditional publisher is going to soak up two years of your life, if not more.

Not to mention a sackload of money.

Because the costs you’ll incur, working with a traditional publisher, are huge. I’ll say more about that next time. It’s a sad fact of life.

Here’s a flowchart if you want to look at timescales for publishing your book. Start at the left.

So, for now let’s focus on this question...

If you want to get your speaking engagements moving, what do you need to do?

Well, in short, you need to take charge of the book publishing process.

Because having a book written and published QUICKLY enables you to do a number of things QUICKLY.

What does getting a book out quickly give you?

Here are the top three things.

1. You’ll get better speaking engagements – faster – with a book.
2. You can share your book’s vision sooner (and easier, by the way) to attract high-level clients.
3. And you can share copies of your book faster and more easily in workshops or seminars for your clients.

SO HOW DO YOU TAKE CHARGE OF PUBLISHING YOUR BOOK?

To publish your book yourself you need to do one of two things:

1.????You need to learn everything there is to know about writing, editing, typesetting, design, publishing and distribution;

2.????Or you can delegate the process.

And frankly if you’re a successful entrepreneur, you know that delegation is always the answer.

WHAT SHOULD YOU CONCENTRATE ON INSTEAD?

Knowing that you’re going to delegate the publishing of your book, your sole contribution to your book is simple.

You really should focus on capturing the thought leadership that goes into your book – your knowledge, beliefs and values.

Thought leadership? What am I talking about here?

In short, it’s everything unique that you say.

Everything unique you believe.

And it’s a real demonstration of the values that you hold through the stories you tell.

Because these are the things that are distinctive about you.

These are the things that make a difference in the minds of other people.

And no one else knows these things – your values, for instance – or can describe them the way you do.

So you should concentrate on telling your unique stories and articulating your beliefs and values by writing them down.

And you will tackle this work in the first half of your book project.

Writing the draft manuscript.

But the second half? The editing, the typesetting, the design work, the publishing and the distribution?

Frankly, you really don’t wanna be doing that. It’s going to slow you down drastically.

You need to delegate it.

HOW DO YOU DELEGATE PUBLISHING YOUR BOOK?

So how do you delegate the publishing of your book?

There are three ways, basically, you can tackle all of those publishing things:

1.????Hire a group of people in-house,

2.????Hire a group of freelancers on Upwork.com,

3.????Or hire a company that specialises in publishing services.

So please, to get your values in front of the people that need to hear from you the most...

First, you do the thinking and the writing.

Then you delegate the publishing.

Please don’t get sucked into trying to do the publishing yourself.

It’ll just add to the length of time it takes you to get your book out.

(Which utterly defeats the object of getting a book out in the first place.)

Next time I’ll tell you exactly how to publish your book. All the steps.

I’ll show you how to do it easily.

And above all I’ll show you how to do it fast.

?

THE STORY SO FAR

1.????If you want to get more speaking engagements faster, you need to write and publish your book fast.

2.????But because traditional publishers will take two years or more to get your book out, you shouldn’t give your book to them. (It makes no sense.)

3.???You need to take charge of publishing your book.

4.????There are two ways to take charge of publishing your book.

5.????First, you can learn to do everything yourself. The editing, the typesetting, the design, the publishing and the distribution.

6.????Or, secondly, you can set up an in-house team, hire a group of freelancers or hire a specialist in publishing services to do it with you.

7.????This frees you up to concentrate on capturing your unique values and vision in your manuscript.

NEXT TIME: exactly how do you publish your book yourself? What are the steps?

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For transparency, this newsletter article first appeared on the blog at Authors Channel