How The Writing Of A Book Helps To Market A Book

Paul Greenberg wrote a book called CRM at the speed of light; I think it was his 3^rd or 4^th edition of the CRM book. He spent a year researching social media and how social media is influencing CRM. He wrote a book about CRM and social media technologies, it’s just as much a book about social media as it is about CRM.

Paul is a great writer because he doesn’t just give you the facts and principles he gives you stories that illustrate those principles. Instead of writing a book just about ideas and concepts my suggestion would be to think about how you can write a book about stories and cases that illustrate your concepts. Take your concepts, put them aside, and think about the stories that are important to your audience, what would interest them.

Paul’s book also worked because he interviewed everyone in the industry, using the phone and social media, 1) he learned how to use social media in the year of writing the book, but 2) he managed to find all of the best stories in the industry.

 

He interviewed most of the leading thinkers in the industry, but also asked them to contribute to the book. This was great in 2 ways, 1) he had content from writers he did not need to write, and 2) he had influencers contribute ideas that helped with the structure and overall value of the book.

My advice is that instead of thinking of a book as something you write, you are more of the editor to the industry, you are still the principal writer, but the more people you can get involved, the more valuable your book, and the more likely the people who contribute will promote the book, because you included them in the book.

Paul did a very good job of breaking up the chapters into smaller sections, everyone likes small bites these days, I think grabbing a few successful business books and leafing through them to get a sense of how the book is structured is a good idea. Paul was good at this, also look at Andy Sernovitz’s book on word of mouth marketing, he is very good at splitting up stories and concepts into sections. 

All of these ideas should help you plan and develop your book so that it markets much more easily.