How Do You Write a Book to Market Your Small Business?

Recently I was introduced to a lovely lady called Kate, who is a coach and a trainer. She was interested in writing a book in order to share her knowledge and expertise, but she really didn’t know the best way to go about doing this. I suggested that she come and spend half a day working with me, in the inspiring surroundings of Appletree HQ, so that we could work out exactly what she should write about.

I thought I’d share with you the process we went through, because if you’re thinking about writing a book and don’t know where to start, it might just help!

What’s on your mind?

The first thing I did was ask Kate to tell me why she wanted to write a book and what ideas she’d come up with so far. I summarized what she told me on a flip with some coloured pens. A couple of key points came out – such as Kate’s idea about interviewing a number of different people, to get their take on certain topics. She had already come up with an idea for the structure of each chapter and just wasn’t sure if it would work, so it went onto the flip chart which we stuck on the wall.

A good way to get started is to just get all your ideas out of your head and onto a piece of paper or a computer screen.

What do you do?

The next thing I did was to ask Kate about her business. I handed over the flip chart and pens and, using diagrams, she described the three main aspects of her business, which we’ll call A, B and C. From this, we worked out three possible book topics – A + B, B +C and A + B + C. As we sat and looked at the three possibilities, it became obvious that Kate’s book should be about A + B + C because it was very unique.

It sounds simple, but again, getting ideas out of your head and sharing them with someone else can really help.

Who do you know?

By this time we were getting hungry, so we took a quick break for lunch in the Appletree kitchen and when we came back, we split the next flip chart into two columns. On one side we started to write a list of people who Kate would like to interview for her book; on the other side we created a list of topics she wanted to cover. We worked on both sides, matching up topics and interviewees, looking for the right people for the right topic (and vice versa.) Kate knows lots of very interesting people and is very well connected, so this was not difficult to do.

While interview won’t be right for everyone, brainstorming a list of potential topics is the next logical stage.

How do you bring it all together?

This was all going really well, but there was something missing. Kate told me that she wanted to talk about ‘her story’ and somehow bring that into the book. So we talked about her early days, her influences and what she wanted to achieve in the future. We wrote a list, in chronological order, of the challenges that she’s faced and overcome during her life.

Then we did something really clever. We took Kate’s list of 12 challenges and matched them up to the 12 main topics and interviewees that we’d already identified. All of a sudden, we had a brilliant order for the chapters of the book, each of which could talk about Kate’s own challenges and how other people have dealt with and overcome the same issues, through the interviews she’s going to use.

Every book needs a good order, whether it’s chronological, alphabetical or something else. Work that out and you’re halfway there!

Get writing!

So now Kate has a structure for her book and for each chapter. She knows who she needs to speak to and she knows that she needs to get on with the writing. All she needs to do now, is get started!