Nicolas Cole walks prospects away from expensive book projects toward publishing articles first. Articles test audience interest, build credibility, and generate data in weeks instead of years. If they work, compile them into a book later with proof of demand.
When I was building my agency selling thought leadership articles, 50% of the calls that I got on, the person said, "I got connected with you because," and they heard, you know, someone else, some whatever, I cold outreach them or they looked at our website or whatever assumption they came to. And they showed up to the call and they said, "I want to write a book." Anyone here think I pivoted my ghostwriting agency to ghostwrite books for people? Of course not. Every single conversation went the exact same way. They were like, "I want to write a book." I validate. I go, "That's really cool." Ask a clarifying question, "Why do you want to write a book?" They go, "Well, because I really want to be seen as a thought leader in my industry." I go, "Okay, what if we could achieve that same outcome in a much easier way that didn't take 2 years slaving over a book?" And they go, "That's really interesting. Tell me about it." I go, "Well, before you write a book, you should probably write on the internet and see whether or not people are even interested in that topic, don't you think?" "Yes." "Before you write a book, you should probably build an audience, right?" "Yes." "Before you write a book, you should probably build some public credibility and make sure that these are ideas that people actually are interested in, right?" "Yes." "Before you write a book, you should probably look at the data and see which one of of these ideas is the highest performing one. Yes? Okay, great. So that's what we do. We go straight thought leadership articles. It achieves a lot of the same goals. And you know what? A year from now, if you want to take them all, smash them together, and publish it as a book, you totally can. I had that conversation, I'm not joking, 500 times.
What Every Writer Gets Wrong About Their Audience #writing #creator #writingtips
