Two speakers argue that speakers writing books need a strategic plan, not generic advice. Speaker B's 2016 self-published book Cracking Speechmate had a playful title that limited its market impact. Effective positioning means understanding reader needs and the author's purpose, not just marketing tactics.
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The success will come from the difference that you make to the people that, that read it. Um, and that will in turn make a difference to your business. If you publish a good book and you publish well, you will always stand out from the crowd. I really believe that. We love books, but we love good books.
Interesting. So I'm gonna sort of hone in on something that you said there. Publish well. First of all, could you unpack what you mean by publish well?
Yes, I can. When I say publish well, it can't— I don't believe a good book comes out of something that is done lightly. It doesn't have to be massively earnest and, you know, erudite and, you know, academic. You know, I'm not talking about that. It could be in its style, it could be quite light and engaging and entertaining. It's about what, what's fit for purpose. I think that's actually really the kind of the core message here. To publish well, you need to have the right plan in place. It's all about being very strategic about it. Because there are so many different routes now, and there are so many ways of publishing, and there are so many people doing different things, there is no one-size-fits-all here. There really isn't. And we are blessed to be in a world where we have so many different options for publishing books that can help us build our businesses.
Mm-hmm.
So publishing well means publishing well for you, and that means having a strategy, having a plan, and creating the right plan for your business. So really being clear about what it is you want to achieve is the place to start. And very closely aligned with that is who the book is for, who your target audience is. Do you know what, as I'm saying this, it's, I'm thinking about what you do. I know there are many speakers listening to this podcast and people who you've worked with. It's, you and I've had many conversations where we've gone, yes, you know, because it is very similar.
Yeah.
It's about understanding You know, the, your delivery, the, the thing, the way that you're going to create this book and the way that you're gonna put it out into this world, the success will come from the difference that you make to the people that, that read it. Um, and that will in turn make a difference to your business.
Cool. And I think I'm gonna come back to that, but I just wanted to give perhaps a practical example. Of something that maybe wasn't published as well as it could be, and, and that is my own book, which, which I wrote in 2016 and went the self-publishing route. And I find this with speakers, and I suspect that you find the same thing with authors. Now, my book was on how to use humour in speaking. At the time, there wasn't much around. I think the content is still great, but I called that book Cracking Speechmate, and my target audience was mostly in America, you know, a bit Australia. I chose a title that made me chuckle and fitted my brand, but didn't actually do the job it needed to do for the book. And I think had I been working with someone like yourself who could have helped me publish well, you would have challenged me on that in the same way that I challenge speakers on talk titles, on, you know, the whole big idea of their talk. And I, you know, I, I— that would have done better. And I—
does that—
is that sort of what you mean as an example? Not all of it, but just a small sort of tiny example.
Yeah, I think it's really, it's a brilliant example. And, and, and, you know, you may be being a little harsh on yourself, but hey, I, I do, I do, I get what you mean. And I get that also, you know, clearly the book didn't quite deliver for you exactly what you wanted. And therefore, you know, on some level, you know, it, it didn't quite work as you'd, as you'd hoped. I think it's 2 things here. Now, sometimes people think of like, you know, working with publishers as there being a kind of curation aspect to it. Well, I think that's probably true in the traditional publishing space, without a doubt, for very— for obvious reasons. Curation is important for them because they have lists that they need. They shape those lists. It's— they're like any other sort of, in a way, a manufacturer. They know what, you know, they know the kind of products they're looking for. They want to make those products, and they know their audience. They know their markets. They, you know, and they might can grow and change and move things around, but essentially they're building products that they're going to sell, that they're going to, uh, you know, to get out into the world. Now that we have a situation where curation in a sense is not necessarily the point, but it is perhaps— there's an element here of positioning. I would call it positioning.
Yeah.
And it's about being really Being able to understand, and this is something that I think that publishers do that perhaps sometimes self-publishers miss out on. You know, you kind of think of positioning and you think of it in a marketing sense as being, well, you know, if I know who I'm writing for and I, you know, then that's about it really. But actually it's a lot more than that. It's a lot more about, you know, what's driving you to write the book in the first place. It's about purpose, it's about mission, it's about how you're gonna make a difference. It's about— you know, about very specifically stepping into the shoes of the people that you're writing for and understanding how to deliver to them something that they are going to find transformative, actually, potentially. Now, it doesn't have to be massive. It could be just one thing in, in your book that changes the way somebody thinks.
Yeah.
That in itself is the kind of snowball beginning. So it's a, You know, it's very much around understanding that, you know, publishers, publishers have a role which is about helping you to clarify your message. And even if you self-publish, you can take a lot from that. You can understand, you know, you can do a lot of work on that by yourself, but it's, it's, it's always good to work with other people because we're too much in our own Heads with too much in our, you know, as kind of probably most people who are thinking about writing a book have expertise of some kind.
Yes.
It's quite hard sometimes when you're sitting in that place to understand exactly how to deliver something that your audience, the audience you want to have the influence and the impact on, will really, really value what you give them.
