Read this book or you’ll kick yourself later

In my heart of hearts, there’s only one real reason I wrote Build a Better Business Book.

It’s because it makes me so sad to see authors stymied — or worse, exploited — because they don’t understand how the process of authoring a book works.

In other words, I don’t just want you to succeed. I want to save you from pain, frustration, and regret.

The missing manual for business authors

O’Reilly and David Pogue used to have a series of books called “the missing manuals,” which explained the undocumented features of common software products. I like the idea of providing a missing manual, and that’s what I set out to do. Build a Better Business Book is the missing manual for business authors.

The missing manual is necessary because publishing works in perverse and confusing fashion. And everyone has a bias. Traditional publishers want you to ignore self-publishing. Self-publishing hucksters want you to think writing books and succeeding is easy (if you’ll just take their class). Academics think every book needs a passel of footnotes. And people who’ve written bestsellers will be happy to explain to you how if it’s not a bestseller, it doesn’t matter.

Add the flood of writing advice that’s primarily meant for fiction writers, and of course business authors are confused.

In my work with authors, I see people making the same mistakes and asking the same questions over and over. My experience — and my author network — means I know a lot of the answers. And I hate seeing people suffer, so I felt like I needed to share those answers.

What sort of questions? Questions like these:

• What publishing model is right for me?
• Why am I stuck — how can I get my project moving again?
• How can I get an agent’s attention?
• How can I source stories that will make my book interesting?
• How can I manage all my research, keep track of it, and organize it?
• How I can work with a coauthor without duplicating effort — or wanting to kill them?
• Who does the book cover? If the publisher creates a terrible cover, can I do anything about that?
• Should I narrate my own audiobook?
• How can I keep track of all the freaking footnotes?
• And finally: is this book thing going to pay off for me — and if so, how?

This book is not just a lead generator. I promise.

Everybody who publishes a book has an angle. (I do too, but it’s mostly just to get those answers out there.)

Some authors want you to hire them to give a speech. I don’t.

Some authors want you to take their course. I don’t have a course.

Some want you to hire them a consultant. I may get some business from this book — people I can help with ideas, with editing, or with ghostwriting. But for every 100 people who read the book, maybe one will hire me. The rest are getting my advice for just the cost of a book.

I just hate the idea of people wasting their time, writing books that could be way better, or failing to promote their books properly.

Just spend a few bucks here and you’ll get most of your questions answered. The eBook is on sale at Amazon for just $9 — that’s unlikely to last. Just read it and if it helps you, leave a review.

Honest, I just want to make sure you don’t kick yourself later. It will be worth it.