Why Your Book Launch Is Just the Beginning | Sandy Smith | 726

Welcome.

This podcast comes out just 2 days before our own book, The Thought Leadership Handbook, launches on July 21st, 2026. This special podcast episode is part of the companion series to the book, and so During launch week for our book, I thought it would be wonderful to speak with Sandy Smith, the CEO of Smith Publicity. Sandy is a good friend and an expert on how to launch a book into the community's conversation and keep it there. In today's episode, Sandy and I talk about book launch. We explore author's goals and the relational power of books. Finally, we explore why an idea is worth an audience's time and attention. I'm Bill Sherman, and you're listening to Leveraging Thought Leadership. Let's begin. Hey, Sandy, welcome to the show.

Thanks, Bill. Happy to be here.

So you and I have had conversations over the years, and it's around expectations on books. And I'm in a weird liminal state right now where The books have come back from the printer to the publisher. I don't have them in hand. And so you could think of me as one of your clients in some ways.

Okay.

I got book launch coming up. What's reasonable to expect and what's unreasonable?

Well, the first question I'm gonna ask is, what are your goals? And what I always ask is, If we're talking a year from today, in, you know, spring of 2027, how are you going to look back and define this book was a success?

Fair. Would you like me to answer that kind of question? Would you?

Yeah, absolutely.

Okay.

Yeah.

Yeah. So Thought Leadership Handbook works on several levels. One, it's a sharing of the frameworks that we have, that we've built the tools because you've got to put the knowledge out into the world for people to A, know that you exist, and B, choose whether or not they want to use those ideas. Secondly, in terms of goals, want to spark conversation around thought leadership among practitioners and then people in the thought leadership ecosystem. Places like Smith Publicity, places like Thought Leadership Leverage, there are a number of publishers, agents, ghostwriters, et cetera, that are adjacent to thought leadership, but we don't use the same terms when we describe it. We struggle to explain what thought leadership is to family and friends. And then most importantly, we segregate ourselves by, I'm an author, I'm a speaker, I'm a consultant. When we deeply believe that why you practice thought leadership is far more important than how. So, okay, sparking conversations. And yeah, we'd love to pick up some clients along the way.

So if that is your goal, to start conversations, add to conversations, and build visibility within the publishing professional ecosystem, all the people who might touch an author, touch a speaker, touch a thought leader, So that they have this information and hey, let's make some money. Let's monetize this and attract the right clients and help them. If that is your goal, then if you're looking at this from the thought leadership publicity, book publicity perspective, what we're going to do is find those ideal audiences and, and this is the fun and creative part is to find those headaches, those aha moments that allow you to shine, to spark that curiosity, to say, I like what Bill said, I want to learn more. So let's put together a plan to get you on the right podcast, to get you writing some bylined articles, which are between 800 and 1,000 words, where you're giving the 5 biggest mistakes people make with their thought leadership brand on, you know, fill in the blank. Get you out there in expert commentary where there are studies, statistics, seasonality, talking about this wonderful world of thought leadership and get you out there giving your insights. These are the kinds of things we do. Yes, we get your book out there to people interested in new books. More importantly, we're getting you in front of new audiences and audiences who already may know who you are, but want to learn more about it. That is what we do. And, you know, leading up to a book launch, it's time to tap into your network as well and showcase your book and to help them celebrate it. Did you know, Bill, that there are so many people, as I'm sure you know, who like thought leaders, like authors, and are looking for a way to help celebrate? So that's something that we do is we say, all right, let's get your friends in high places. Who are they? What's the ask? Could be a podcast, a newsletter, a bulk purchase buy. And this is what you should be doing at this stage. And then who's going to be asking? Is it you directly, a friend of yours, your publicist? What's the timing? What is the asset? So these are all the things we'd be talking about now if you're coming right before you go on.

Yeah. And This is something that you and I have both seen, right? Where there's momentum and this excitement coming up to launch, and then there's a 60 days of business flurry, right? And you're trying to go everywhere, tell everybody, and then there's almost a moment of— Exactly. That sigh. I'm done.

This is it. I've worked for 2 and a half years to get this book, and the publication date is here. It's great. I've been on a few podcasts. I got some beautiful LinkedIn posts. I've got my friends and my mailman writing book reviews on Amazon. Now what? And so what we say is your publication date is your birthday. This is the beginning.

I love that.

This is an asset that you have spent. You get your name on this. You've invested in this. And And if you have a good publishing partner and, and a good thought leadership partner, it's evergreen topic. That's not going to be, you know, outdated in, in 3 months, 6 months. We look at this book as a 2 and 3 year asset. It's something that we celebrate.

And that's funny cuz we usually say 5 to 7.

5 to 7. Okay. So we want them to write another book.

No, but, um, and even if they don't, and we're saying, hey, monetize that first one. Monetize it before you go and spend another couple years writing.

And here's another secret too. When we're working with a thought leadership expert author and they're coming out with their latest book, yes, we're talking about the new book. We'll go back 2 or 3 books. If there's a topic that's in the news, we're gonna go back to the book you published 7 years ago and showcase it. Absolutely.

Unless you wrote about Y2K, you know, there are cycles in thought leadership. So if I think about the Great Recession in 2007, before that, there was Dan Gilbert doing In Search of Happiness. You had Gretchen Rubin with The Happiness Project, right? And all of these books focused in 2007 coming out around happiness. 2009's titles were about resilience. There's a seasonality. Happiness will come back.

We hope it will. Because there are new generations that are looking for strategies. And if it worked in 2008, it's probably going to work in 2026. And you can—

if you were intentional in your writing, right?

Exactly. Exactly. Based on sound case studies and human emotions, human struggles are not changing that dramatically. And, you know, 20 years that the core of your advice, your solutions, what you're uniquely known for, you're just going to add to that conversation. So we don't go just for the pages of the book. If you have experience outside the book in a previous book, that's what we're talking about. So this book has it when done right. It has such beautiful asset for any thought leader to use. It gives you credibility. It sets you apart. And it's something you can hand to people and again showcase, you know, what makes you brilliant, what makes you unique. Get that aha of, hi, this is what I need to solve my problems.

So one of the things you talk about and we also believe in is that relational aspect, right? That books really open, nourish, and support relationships, and opportunities come from those relationships. And I know that impacts how you work and how we think as well. I want to give you some space of why that outperforms the sort of rainbows and unicorns frenzy of 60 days, right, post-launch.

Right. Yes. Whether it's in your book or any other way that you're sharing content, as we in this field like to know, you got to talk, you got to give some things away for free from your knowledge in order to get people to know you, like you, and trust you. In a book, let's face it, it's not a big investment for someone to—

No, it isn't.

You get years of research and and knowledge and, you know, just think of how long you've been on this earth practicing what you're practicing. It's not about the last 6 months of your life. It could be, you know, 10, 20, 30 years of experience all in a book. And the way that you write a book, it has the lived experience. It, it shows your values. It shows your perspectives, the, the, the many case studies on how you took someone from A, with a problem through B, C, D, with some ugly, messy in the middle, to a resolution that builds that aha moment, that trust. And why should they listen to me? Here's what I've been able to do, and here's my personality, my credential. So these books allow you to build that relationship in a very inexpensive way. People can go to your bookshelf, and we all have them here. And go back and revisit the book and also the thought leadership book. And we always say here at Quirk, not always read like a novel, right? You can pull out a chapter, a section, a worksheet, an illustration. So the value of the book and that relationship you have with the reader, it's just so the longevity is there, that the potential to really—

Well, and talk about that multi-pathway through the book, right? I've bought books where I've been in a bookstore, I see a 2x2, you know, diagram and I go, okay, that's worth the price of admission alone. Whether or not I read the whole book, that framework is useful. I want it on my shelf, right? When I was writing the book, that how-to-read-it section that authors have to write, and it's sort of compulsory, you know. I don't know if it's written in stone tablets somewhere, but I said, okay, you could read this book linearly like a regular book. You could read the first few chapters, then you could turn into the section of thought leadership avatars and choose the one that resonates most with you. Or if you've been practicing thought leadership for a while, read chapter 1, hop straight to chapter 12, which explains what we see about the industry, where it should be going, and why it needs to change. Choose your own adventure and let the reader choose, right? We can do that on websites. We should be able to do that in books. What happens when your idea is bigger than your current reach? That's the question behind The Thought Leadership Handbook. Peter Winick, Naren Ariyal, and myself wrote it to help experts, authors, speakers, and executives understand their thought leadership path and build the systems that help ideas scale. Learn more at thoughtleadershiphandbook.com and preorder the book at Amazon, Barnes Noble Bookshop, or Amplify.

Speaking of your avatars, who do you think of your avatars are the ones that this book will be the most surprising, that, that, that may be the underserved avatar that don't realize that kind of leveraging their thought leadership can really build dividends for them?

So it depends. I mean, we work with people at different stages. You've got the emerging thought leaders who, they've given their first speech, whether or not they got paid for it, or they're writing their first article and people say, give me more, right? And they're like, do I have more? What do I do? How do I build it? Right? And then you've got the folks who are out on the road. They've been doing thought leadership. They've written books, they give speeches, they live in hotels as consultants or speakers.

They've got the road warriors, right?

Right. And we've had them, and I'm sure you've had them as well as clients say, can I replace my revenue mix and spend less time on the road? Because I'm tired. I've got a kid that's growing up and I don't want to be absent. And then you've got the seasoned thought leaders who are looking, going, I want to retire. I want this idea to survive me. And those levels are different questions. The third is almost a philosophical question in some ways of what does it mean to spend a lifetime in service to an idea? Why in the world does any of us spend so much time in our careers talking to strangers about ideas? Right? Yeah. So the challenge of the book was threading value for all three of those levels.

Okay.

Right?

Okay.

And that was draft one, draft two, draft three, so that, as you said, it can be evergreen. Yeah, there are things that if you're just looking for a hand— handbook and an activity, sure, turn to the page with the activity of how do you organize your content library? Great. It's applied, use it, done. But if you want to explore stories of people who have done this and their moments of fear and doubt, that's there. If you want to explore the question of why does this field matter and how do we explain it or defend it against critics, because there are a lot of people who bag on thought leadership as a term. Rightly or wrongly, that's the name this field has.

Right, right. As we're redoing our, our website, it's like thought leader, expert, expert brand, and it's like, how can we say the same thing? So can you come up with the, the term that we're all going to universally use? That would be great.

I wound up landing on practitioner of thought leadership or thought leadership practitioner. Oh, because I make the argument that it's a lot more like mindfulness, meditation, yoga. You embrace the values, the generosity, the service, the creating value for others, but you never get a badge that says you're done. You are in service of your audience and your ideas rather than check the box, I updated my LinkedIn profile and it says Thought Leader.

But Right, right. That's such a, that's such a great perspective, not having that, that badge or that degree or that certificate that I have arrived. And, and, and your opinion, and, and we see this too, when do you see that tipping point from someone who's an aspiring thought leader to really making that difference? Is it in a book? Is it in the generosity? Is it in their discipline to keep learning and growing themselves?

I think different people get different ways, and I'm going to connect with a couple stories of people that we both know and are known in the field. So you talk about Stephen R. Covey Sr., Seven Habits Stephen Covey, and Stephen M.R., his son, who was running the business. And he talks about saying, hey, I'm happy to let dad be the thought leader. I'll stay behind. I'll run the business because I don't want to be the poor man's Covey. Right? Until he knew he had something to say of value to an audience and was passionate about it, he didn't need to be the thought leadership voice. Turn to someone like Eduardo Briceño, right? Eduardo constantly asks himself, What do I know? He's introspective almost in a way. He's like a modern philosopher in a number of ways, always focused on self-improvement. And then you have people like Marshall Goldsmith and Chester Elton. So Marshall— Chester, Chester went to Marshall and asked him to write the foreword for a book. And Marshall, of course, said yes, because that's what Marshall does, right? And they were at a speaking event and he's like, I say yes. And you know what, Chester? You should too, because the goal is not to be top, but to help other people rise on the ladder in thought leadership.

Yeah.

Right? So when Peter and I launched the podcast back in 2018, we went to a few usual suspects of people we knew and trusted and were names in the field. Chester not only said yes, but he insisted on being our first guest.

I love that because the generosity, that's a generous, that, that is showing, um, that you have arrived understanding that generosity and the power of community, right? As a thought leader, right?

And my argument is that the community of thought leadership is much larger and needs to be more integrated. Than, oh, we're ghostwriters, we're publicists, we're authors, speakers. No, we're all doing this work of taking ideas to scale.

Yes. Yes. And when, when people play well together, the synergies and the ideas and the amplification of, of the expert brand, the thought leadership brand. Because when, when that happens, when that magic happens, you're touching more lives and hopefully improving them in some way with your advice, with your solutions. It's, it's, it's, I always say, like, tell me, tell me about your book and what are the stresses that you're going to take away from someone? Are you informing them? Are you, you know, I say people write business books to either make more money for themselves, make more money for their business, or to decrease stress. In some way. Take away the parts of work that you're just not enjoying. And when we can get into those conversations, you can see these experts, these authors, they just light up because they never quite looked at themselves with that kind of like superhero cape.

Well, and the other thing that you can see, and I look for as well, is do they have their spark in their eye when they're talking about their topic? Because if they don't have that spark, they're going to get tired on book tour, let alone the next couple of years. You've got to wake up on Monday morning and go, who do I get to talk to about this topic? Rather than, oh dear God, I got to write another article.

Exactly. And not to say that if you're not a great writer, you can't get some support and help. Oh, absolutely. And help out there. And the same thing we've got authors that said, I don't like to write articles because I have to be so exacting. I'd rather have a conversation and vice versa. But you're exactly right, Bill. It's the excitement to want to get out and kind of, you know, shout from the rooftop how I can help you.

Small e evangelical, you know, a fragmented, imperfect truth of how the world works and you put it out into the world. Hoping that the people who will find it helpful will tune in. But you have no right to an audience. They've got to choose to tune in. They can walk out and go, yeah, this isn't interesting. This isn't for me. They put the book down. They stop reading the article, whatever.

That's a gift. Yes. And our work with the book publicity, part of it all, we have to coach our clients that they're Some have these big ideas that maybe the world's not quite ready for yet, or all audiences aren't ready for them yet. So we have an approach where we bring in their perspectives to conversations that are already happening, right? Like, here's an issue, say, um, should we work remotely or should we be in office? And, you know, that's one of the books that we worked on and one of the topics. And instead of coming in with a brand new conversation of why an office is better, which is what this author said, you have to come into the current conversations, but then you get the opportunity to start a brand new conversation and knowing how to pivot between both. It's really exciting. And with that, we talk about your ideal target audience. And I, I'll say, who do you want to work with? But I'll also say, who's ready? Who's right for your message? And kind of the joke I use is, um, and especially a lot with bringing hope and care and, you know, mental health to say a workplace. And little joke is, you know, that lawyers need it the most, but they're not an audience because they're just not ready to hear this and not ready to embrace this. So who, so who are the really understanding who is ready for your kind of big idea is part of the process. Yes. Part of that—

starting a conversation is hard. Starting a conversation with an audience that isn't ready is incredibly hard. Right. And so being able to understand who's gonna lean in, who will become advocates for this idea and talk about it themselves. Because if you're the only one creating momentum for this idea, you're going to get really tired. There's only so much you can do.

And there's a lot of heavy lifting. Exactly. It's a lot of heavy lifting to do. So that's part of the fun of this is understanding how you're serving people and then take that energy, Bill, and go out and talk to the right people who are ready and that are open to the ideas so they can then take it on and go alongside you.

You said something there that lands very close to my heart, which is thought leadership is about doing the work and finding the joy in it. It's not easy, but if you're targeted and seeing impact, and you're helping others, you can make a good living and also make the world a better place, which is a whole lot of fun.

Right. And come back at the end of the day and say, I made a difference. I just read an article this morning in New York Times about depression and people under 30 when it relates to work. And it wasn't because they had a bad boss. It wasn't because they weren't compensated to a level that they'd like. It was because they felt they weren't making a difference. Wow. Yeah.

That on its own is an answer to why thought leadership. Mm-hmm. Sandhya, I want to thank you for joining us today and talking about the world and work of ideas.

Well, thank you, Bill, for having me. And I will be sharing your book with many, many aspiring and, and thought leaders and those who are ready to take their work to the next level. So thank you for writing this book.

I'm deeply touched. Thanks, Andy. Every episode of this podcast explores a different thought leadership journey, and now many of those lessons have been brought together in our new book, The Thought Leadership Handbook. To go deeper, visit thoughtleadershiphandbook.com where you can read a free excerpt, discover your own thought leadership avatar, and access tools designed to help you sharpen your strategy. That's thoughtleadershiphandbook.com. Order your copy today at Amazon, B&N Bookshop, and Amplify.