I created a free course for HubSpot Academy called How to Write and Publish a Book that Transforms Business and Supercharges Your Personal Brand. In my course, you will learn the steps to go from an idea to a bestseller.
Authorship is within anyone’s reach, yet many people are worried about the size of the task. I suggest that you don’t think of your project as a 35,000-word book. That’s intimidating if you are looking at a blank MS Word file.
Instead, think of your book as a series of 500-word blog posts or LinkedIn articles. Write one a day and 70 days later you have a first draft of your book. That makes it less daunting.
I also dig into how to use AI with your own data to make it easier to write a book. I’m not talking about having ChatGPT write some drek for you, but rather how AI can be a tool to make the process of transforming your ideas easier.
There are many ways to publish a book. In one of the lessons, you will gain an understanding each publishing model so you can make the right choice for you.
You will be able to compare the various publishing models available to you, including traditional publishing, specialty offerings such as those from academic publishers, self-publishing either direct or via Amazon’s KDP, or the innovative new hybrid publishing options.
Your book can be transformational.
For example, my friend Peggy Sullivan wanted to generate more paid speaking engagements. She wrote a book Beyond Busyness: How to Achieve More by Doing Less. Peggy then was able to get a TedX talk, because the TedX organizer said, ‘Oh, you've got a book. Great! That's an interesting topic. Would you like to do a TedX talk on that topic?’. The last time I checked it had nearly 1.2 million views on YouTube. Her book and TEDx have generated paid speaking opportunities that she didn't have before.
One of the myths of book publishing, especially people who work with a big famous publisher, is that the publisher markets your book like crazy, and gets it to be sold in the marketplace.
Unless you’re already a household name, the publisher simply implements what’s difficult for you to do by yourself, like designing, editing, and printing the book, or getting it into bookstores and writing a basic press release. They will do some very rudimentary marketing and sales. It’s up to you, the author, to market your book.
Using a platform like HubSpot makes it easier for authors to connect with their readers and follow up with new opportunities. When you sell a book, you don’t usually sell it yourself but rather your reader buys it from a bookseller like Amazon, so you don’t know who your readers are. In my case, by tying an offer in the book back to my HubSpot website, and then having somebody’s email address from a signup form drop into my HubSpot, I can remarket to them, which is a big plus.
Check out my free course or contact me if you’re interested in book coaching.
Disclosure: I am a member of the HubSpot advisory board.