Peter Winick argues that authors often obsess over their book's deadlines and sales while missing its real purpose: positioning themselves as an expert and creating new revenue streams. The book should be a platform, not the main event.
So here's why your book can't be the tail that wags the dog. Most people, when writing a book— authors, thought leaders, etc.— they get really obsessed about the book. And it makes sense. We can talk about it at a cocktail party. It's got very specific deadlines and deliverables. It's physical. Once it's produced, I can hand it to somebody or At least half the time it's physical, the other half it's digital, and we get really kind of book-centric. There's a couple of problems with that, and what I've seen is it becomes, again, the tail that wags the dog. You've got a couple of different constituencies sort of battling out what success looks like. So your publisher, as great as they may be, or maybe you're self-published, the concern there is how many units are we going to sell, how quickly are we going to sell them, and how many units are we going to sell. And that's not a bad thing. That's what they do. You have to determine for yourself what success means for that book. And in many cases it could mean selling lots and lots and lots of books and getting on the New York Times bestseller list and all the doors that those things— that can be opened as a result of those things. But oftentimes success does not need to be defined in that grand mass success or marketed kind of way. Success could mean that as a result of getting this book published, this population now sees you as an expert in Y, or it's an offering of a new product, solution, service, etc., that is a derivative product of the book where maybe you make, if any money on a book, a little bit of money, where you can make a lot of money on the product, services, and offering. So don't let the Don't let the book be the tail that wags the dog. Define for yourself what success looks like as a result of writing the book and launching the book, and focus on those things. And make sure that you have those other nets out there in the waters to catch the fish that you can. Thanks so much.
