If you’re lucky and talented enough to write a best-selling book, what impact will it have on your life? So many of us would like to be authors, but we have no idea what that means. Will you make more money? Get a better job? Have more sex?
How exactly will your life change?
To give us some answers, I brought in career expert Penelope Trunk, author of Brazen Careerist. As a syndicated columnist writing for the Boston Globe and Yahoo Finance, Penelope is already an authority on how to manage your career and how things like writing a book can affect your life.
She also has a blog, which is, in my opinion, one of the best on the Web. Since I know many of you are bloggers, I managed to squeeze a few nuggets of wisdom out of her on making the transition from blog to book. For more of Penelope’s advice, check out these posts:
How to Get a Six-Figure Book Deal from Your Blog
Coachology: How to Get a Book Deal
Now to the interview!
1) I’m an expert in my field. How will writing a book help my career?
A book is a great marketing tool. For example, it will help you get speaking engagements, if you want that. Having a book published is sort of like having a ticket to play in the speaking world. And if you have a blog, the book is good advertising for the blog. A book can do a lot of things for you, but you really need to know why you are writing the book. You shouldn’t write a book thinking it will be a bestseller because you are probably better off buying lottery tickets. And you shouldn’t write a book thinking that it will change your life to be a published author. It won’t. You are the same you whether you have a published book or not.
2) Should I start a blog first?
If you can handle posting regularly to a blog, it’s a great way to get yourself known for your expertise. A blog is a great marketing tool for consultants. You don’t get an advance to write a blog like you do to write a book, but a lot of people get so much business from their blog that they don’t need a book in order to grow their business to where they want it to be.
3) How is it different, writing for a blog and writing for a book?
A book needs to unfold, in a linear way into a big idea. A blog is nonlinear. And while most blogs have a few, central, big ideas, each post can stand on it’s own without being about a big idea. A blog can succeed by having a good topic area. A book succeeds by answering a good question.
I have a difficult time making the transition. In fact, I blogged about how my book was a year late because my editor rejected my first manuscript. (http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2007/03/08/hey-its-time-to-pre-order-my-book/) My editor had to teach me how to stop thinking like a columnist and blogger (very easy to transition between those two) and to start thinking in bigger ideas with linear buildup.
4) Can I repackage my blog posts as a book like Seth Godin?
We all can do that. But we won’t get the advances that Seth gets.
5) You’ve said sex makes people happier. Will writing a bestseller get me laid?
Research shows that making more money does not get you more frequent sex, it gets you a wider selection of sex partners. So I think that based on this research the answer to your question is no: The amount you are getting laid will not change.
6) I have 10,000 RSS subscribers. Will my publisher care?
The publisher will care a little. But you need to show you have other ways to sell your book because there is not strong evidence that if someone reads a blog they will buy that blogger’s book.
7) How can I convince bloggers to promote my book?
Be a part of the blogging community. And be nice. And be all this not because your book is coming out but because you genuinely care about the blogging community. In return, the community will care about you.
8) Which is more important: links from blogs or mentions in the conventional media?
Both have helped me. It is very hard to get a book deal today without being able to show you have traction in conventional media. So it’s been really good for me that I have a foot in each door. Tim Ferriss and Bob Sutton both got to the bestseller list without much help from traditional media, so this is good evidence that you can rely on bloggers to take you to the top. But publishers, I think, would still be wary of buying a book proposal that relied solely on this strategy.
9) How important is it to pick the right agent?
I don’t know. I sent my proposal out to five agents that I picked randomly from a list of agents who said they were not accepting new clients. (I figured they must be good if they don’t need more business.) One of those agents took me, and I am staying with her. I think that when things are not going well for a writer, the writer blames the agent. But my guess is that that is often misplaced blame.
10) Congratulations on getting a six-figure contract for your second book. How are things different, the second time around?
My agent is one of those really, really, busy always-doing-lunch types. The first time I sort of waited until she called me, which was so nail-bitingly intense. The second time I was a huge pest, and it was easier to know where things stand every second during the auction.
The other difference is that the first time I sold a book I thought it would be really easy to write a book. This time around I know it’s very hard, so I have more anxiety about getting it right.
If you enjoyed this post, click here to subscribe for automatic updates.
Leave a Reply