The Write Strategy

Part One: Why Write

Let’s not beat around the bush – writing and publishing a book is hard. It takes a considerable investment of time and resources to do properly. Like any challenge, it takes discipline and fortitude to see it through to the end and reap the rewards of your investment.

This is why it is vitally important to the success of your book-writing journey that you find the proper motivation to see you through the difficult periods that will undoubtedly crop up during this process. This is the fourth book I’ve written, and during each one I have had to overcome some obstacle or another. Without a firm understanding of the benefit that I would get at the end, and why I was pursuing that benefit, I probably would never have published my first.

In this section, we are going to look at what those benefits and reasons are so that you can go into this process knowing that it is worth the effort.

In Chapter 1 we are going to look at the power of books as a whole. How we as a society view authors and how we can use that perception to our advantage as business owners.

Chapter 2 looks more specifically at the benefits that a well-written book can have on our businesses and on us as thought leaders.

So, let’s get started by delving into the Power of Books.

Chapter 1: The Power of Books

When I first sat down to rough out the skeleton for this book in late 2023, I had a catch-up with a very close friend of mine, Paul Newton, whom I had convinced several years earlier to write a book. We got onto the subject of just how much that book had changed not only his life but the very face of his business and, by extension, the lives of his family and business partner as well.

When I first met Paul, he was a successful magician, doing weddings and events for around £200-£300 a gig. He was also exploring the idea of applying his understanding of manipulation, persuasion and sleight of hand to real-world applications in fraud prevention and cyber security and was just starting to get some traction doing corporate talks on the subject. At the time, his monthly turnover target was £1k per month. That was enough for him to pay the bills and still have plenty of time to spend with his young daughter.

In February 2019, we were chatting over coffee after a networking breakfast, and we discussed the idea that what he was doing was so unique and so interesting, that he needed to write a book. Though the idea of writing a book was intriguing to Paul, he struggled with the idea of ‘himself’ writing a book. The typical mental roadblocks that many authors face, such as “Who am I to write a book?”, “No one will want to read a book about that”, “I don’t have time to write a book”, and “I can’t afford to publish a book”, all bubbled to the surface over the several months after that first conversation. But to his credit, Paul stuck with it and on December 1st, 2020, Mental Theft hit the shelves, co-authored with his business partner Jesse Lawrence.

Since then, the book has received 42 five-star reviews on Amazon, which in itself is great. But during our catchup call, the true magic of the impact that book has had on Paul’s life and business started to come out. Since the end of COVID, he has been invited to speak in Dubai, America and Stockholm on multiple occasions, and he has consulted for clients like Epson and Hiscox. His original £200-£300 per gig fee had 10x’ed, meaning that Paul’s previous earnings average of £1k/month had skyrocketed to over 7 times that amount.

Paul told to me that 80-90% of the speaking gigs he was now being invited to do came off the back of the book in some form or another. And that one such trip to Stockholm resulted in him being offered a non-executive director position for a cyber firm that would result in an additional £60k/year in revenue for one day of work every two months. He said:

“It’s possibly the most expensive business card I could have ever thought of, but oh my word, the returns on it are much better than any business card you could ever have… There is something magical when somebody introduces you on stage and you know that they’ve got up on the screens ‘Paul Newton, Author’. It puts you into a very different bracket compared to Paul Newton, the magician who messes around with elastic bands.”

It’s stories like Paul’s that are the reason why I love what I do. Hearing about the transformations that I’ve helped to make possible gives me far more job satisfaction than I have ever experienced throughout my entire career. But more than that, it’s the reason why I have written this book. The power that a book can have to change the world cannot be overstated enough… a book can truly revolutionise the way you show up to the world, the way you conduct business, and the way the world perceives what you do and why you do it.

Paul’s story is just one example of the power that books have. In this chapter, I’m going to unpack a few more superpowers that books have tucked within their pages.

1.1 Education Bias

One of the reasons that books can have such an impact on our thinking and behaviour is something I’ve always referred to as the education bias.

In pretty much every developed nation’s education system around the world, students are taught from a very young age that if they want a credible source of information they are to rely on books. Throughout history, textbooks and recommended reading lists have been the cornerstone of formal education. I can remember throughout my education in both Canada and the UK being told to go to the library to do my research for any project I had to complete, from grade school, through college and university, and even in further personal and professional development.

This ingrained habit of turning to books for accurate information then carries over into adulthood meaning that we automatically associate someone who has written a book as being an expert in that subject. The very idea of how much perceived time, effort and knowledge that is required to write a book immediately elevates the author’s status in our minds. That the intellectual investment the author has made is something to be respected and admired.

Education bias continues to be a powerful motivator for our thinking because of the perceived validation that comes from respected educational institutions reinforcing this notion that books are a credible source of information. Every major school, college and university the world over will have its own library of curated books. Their classes will have dedicated textbooks used during the learning process, and every degree, diploma and accreditation course will have a recommended reading list of books that have been deemed crucial to the learning of that subject.

All this can have a tremendous effect on someone’s opinion of you when they are meeting you or hearing of you for the first time. The fact that you have written and published a book on your subject of expertise automatically marks you in their mind as someone who knows their stuff and is willing to help others by sharing that knowledge.

Using education bias when it comes to book authorship is a powerful way to leverage yourself head and shoulders above your competition, especially if you are in a crowded industry. Most of your competitors will not take the time and effort to write and publish a book, so this one project can leapfrog you to the top of the list simply by adding ‘Author of…’ to your bio.

Education bias extends beyond just sales and business into marketing and media. Because of this accepted perception of authors as experts, newspapers, blogs, podcasts and magazines will seek authors out to add valuable insight and commentary to existing stories they are working on, and even as sources of content they can publish outright. All this makes it so much easier to be seen by the market, which again further adds to your credibility and your status as an expert.

1.2 One-to-One with Thousands

Another powerful aspect of books is their ability to influence at scale. Think of how many meetings you would need to arrange to get your message to one thousand people. A lot, right? Even if you were meeting with corporate teams or running training seminars, you would still be looking at hundreds of meetings. With video conferencing technology, you might be able to pull that off within one year, but you most likely wouldn’t have much time left over to do anything else.

A book, though, allows you the opportunity to create personal connections with readers at scale. It allows you to convey your message directly to thousands of people at any given moment. Each reader, though one of many, is able to form a personal connection with you as the author as if you wrote the book just for them.

That concept on its own is powerful enough. But what happens when you multiply the number of people who can read your book? Unlike a meeting or seminar, books can be read and re-read time and time again. They can, and often are, passed from reader to reader, expanding your reach on an exponential scale. This means that your one-to-one conversation with a reader can happen multiple times, often years after it was published, giving it a timelessness that is extremely difficult to replicate in any other medium.

And it gets better. Not only do books allow you to extend the life of your message, but they can also remove geographical boundaries as well. Unlike a physical meeting or seminar, a book can be read by multiple readers simultaneously, anywhere in the world. This can allow you to create a truly global brand without the expense of travel or setting up overseas offices.

Now you may be thinking, “But Sam, a book is a fixed thing, it doesn’t allow for an interactive conversation that I would get from meeting with someone face-to-face”. And that is true, at least from the standpoint of the reader not being able to ask you questions as they read your content. But a book does allow each reader to create a tailored reading experience for themselves. They can pause, reflect, and re-engage with the content, on their terms, adapting that one-to-one conversation to suit their pace and understanding. They can go away and test your theories or practices as they apply to their situation, and still can contact you directly if they want more – I’ll talk more later on the best ways to ensure this is easy for your readers.

All this combines to create a vehicle to amplify your voice, allowing your core message to reach a vast audience, anywhere, at any time, without losing the personalised touch of your unique narrative. Books can serve as a bridge between the solitary act of writing and communication, and the act of reading, transcending the limitations of traditional one-to-one interactions.

1.3 Global Reach

I touched on this concept briefly in the previous section but now want to delve deeper into the idea that a book can be a global tool, as this is one of the most powerful aspects of a book. This idea that a book can travel where you physically can’t, allowing you to reach readers in any location and introducing your business to international markets with ease, is of the utmost importance to business authors.

I sometimes feel that younger generations take for granted how connected and accessible our world is today. As a Gen-Xer, I grew up in a world with no social media. The internet didn’t become accessible to the general public until I was in college. If you wanted to do business with someone in another country, sure you could hold the initial negotiations over the phone, but you had to fly there to seal the deal.

But books have never had that limitation. Throughout the history of the printed book, it has had the power to transcend borders. And now, when you add modern technology to that innate power you get something truly transformational. E-commerce platforms like Amazon, which have global distribution networks underpinned with print-on-demand technology, make it possible for books to be easily discovered and purchased by an international audience within minutes.

So far, we’ve only been discussing physically printed books. When you start to factor in digital publishing options like eBooks and audiobooks, which have no shipping costs or delivery limitations, the reach of that content grows exponentially by making it instantly accessible. Even within the sphere of eBooks, limitations that once existed in the early days of the technology have now vanished. You no longer need a separate device to read an eBook; you can access thousands of them from any smartphone.

Thankfully, how we market and promote books has also grown and adapted to this new borderless world we live in. Social media platforms equally can transcend borders, allowing you to market your book to your worldwide audience with just a few clicks. They also give you the ability to create targeted marketing campaigns for different regions by adapting your message to local languages and customs.

The icing on the cake comes when you truly embrace the global ethos and start to explore foreign language translations. This allows you to not only distribute your message to a global audience, supported by localised marketing, but you can also present that message in the readers’ own language with minimal effort and investment.

All this underscores the immense power of books, which when paired with social media and global distribution to cross borders and time zones, brings your business message to a worldwide audience and establishes you as a global authority in your field.