The Business Case for Writing Business Books

Are business books still worth writing? In a world saturated with short-form content – much of it now AI generated – what is the real value of a business book?

This webinar explores why business books still matter. Thinkers50 co-founder Stuart Crainer and CEO Mikko Leskelä are joined by Naren Aryal, founder and CEO of Amplify Publishing Group, bestselling author Dorie Clark (Thinkers50 Ranking), and author and consultant Abhijit Bhaduri.

So what does it take to publish a successful business book? Here are some of the key takeaways:

• Know your why: most business books are written for a bigger strategic reason than royalties.
• Build your platform first: test ideas through posts, newsletters, and podcasts before you commit.
• Think long term: Dorie Clark had a 5-year plan behind her book The Long Game. “Every day is launch day,” commented Ruth Gotian.

Find out more about the different publishing models, when to use AI, and how to “win – even if you lose”.

Watch The Business Case for Writing Business Books

Transcript

Stuart Crainer:

Hello, I’m Stuart Crainer, co-founder of Thinkers50. Over the last three decades, it might even be four decades to be honest, I’ve written books, ghost-written and edited books, rewritten books, published and promoted books, and sometimes suggested that a book may not be the best option at this particular time. So welcome to this LinkedIn Live in which we look inside the world of business book publishing. The motivations, the expectations, the payback, the processes, the business case for writing books, the joy, the occasional misery, the expectations, the disappointments, and much more. We have a lot to cover, and some great people are going to help us on our way in this two-part webinar. There’ll be two sessions of 45 minutes each with a special guest, Abhijit Bhaduri in part one, and Dorie Clark in part two. There’ll be no break in between, so look out for a seamless transition.

As always, please send in your comments and thoughts along the way. Let us know where you’re joining us from as well. So I’m joined by Mikko Leskela and Naren Aryal. Joining from Helsinki is Mikko, who is the CEO of Thinkers50. A reformed consultant,  he is the author of three books. And from Washington, we are joined by Naren, who is the founder and CEO of Amplify Publishing Group. Amplify has grown to become a distinguished hybrid publisher, celebrated for its innovative approach to business and thought leadership titles. Amplify is now also, most importantly, home to a Thinkers50 imprint, and the first titles of this new imprint will be out in the world this year. I should also take the opportunity to mention that Naren is the co-author of the Thought Leadership Handbook. Indispensable reading. So it’s great to have Mikko and Naren on board for this discussion.

And joining us is Abhijit Bhaduri. Abhijit is a six-time author with more to come. He joins us from Seattle. Abhijit has a rich history of fostering growth in companies like Microsoft, PepsiCo, and Tata Steel. A couple of Abhijit’s recent titles include The Digital Tsunami and Dreamers and Unicorns, which explains why leadership, talent, and culture are the new growth drivers. His much awaited book titled Career 3.0: Six Skills You Must Have to Succeed has introduced the term Career 3.0 into everyday language. So let’s begin with the fundamental question. Mikko, Naren and Abhijit, why do people write business books? Mikko, do you want to have a go at that question? Why do people write business books?

Mikko Leskelä:

The thing is that there needs to be always some underlying business reason for writing a business book. Most likely there’s also, from an economics point of view, there’s some much bigger motivation than the money you actually get from the book sales. That must hold true to some other forms of publishing as well, but especially in business books, there’s always some underlying thing. For example, with consulting, I mean, when I did my first books and with the first one, I get a few, I mean, a decent amount of money from the book sales, but I was able to sell four millions worth of consulting over two years because of that, just the first book. Yeah. So there’s always some undercurrent there, some bigger reason that has a number to it.

Stuart Crainer:

Well, I think there’s always got to be… Yeah, there’s got to be some clear business reason. Often I’ve encountered people who think they should write a book without any clear, really, business payoff or objective. So I think you’ve got to be clear about the objectives. What about you, Abhijit? What was your motivation? I mean, you’ve actually run companies, run organisations and done things in the executive world. So what was your motivation?

Abhijit Bhaduri:

So I think first of all, you have to see that in today’s world, every job title has an expiry date because your skills have an expiry date. So the real challenge is not whether you should write a business book, but you should write a business book that survives the test of time. So if the half-life of a skill is two and a half years, that’s the least amount of time your business book should survive. So to write something relevant is the real question, not to write a book. Besides, it creates conversations with people you don’t know, it opens doors. And in many ways, for somebody who is a content creator like me, every book, every page should really be a content generator. So these are, for me, the big ideas that when you think about writing, you’re really trying to put many of these ideas into practice.

Stuart Crainer:

And meaning when it comes to content creation… Oh, Naren’s rejoined us. You’re back in the world of book publishing, Naren?

Naren Aryal:

I am back. Sorry about that.

Stuart Crainer:

So why do people write books in your experience?

Naren Aryal:

Oh, geez. Well, so I think the main thing is, especially today in the era of AI, it is the ultimate showcasing of your mastery of a subject matter. We have short form content everywhere these days, and very few people can display their mastery of a subject matter in long form content. And that is the reason why even today, a book is still the gold standard of showcasing one’s mastery of a subject matter. That is why.

Mikko Leskelä:

Yeah. I have to say that I agree with Naren. The book is one of those formats that actually exposes bad thinking if there’s any. You get away with a lot when you do short format, and especially if you do video, especially if you do LinkedIn Lives. But I mean, putting something in a long format writing, it exposes if your ideas are not mature enough. But the authors don’t know that when they do it for the first time. Like Stuart, you said that a lot of people say that they should write a book before they even know why.

Abhijit Bhaduri:

And also, you do have a scenario. It’s the difference between exchanging a couple of sentences with somebody and having a deep conversation. They are very different. Just introducing myself and saying, “This is what I do,” tells you nothing about me until I’ve said a couple of things about what I stand for. So a book is really that versus short form content.

Stuart Crainer:

But isn’t it the case, you read a lot of books and you think that was originally a Harvard Business Review article and it shouldn’t really have been expanded, which I’ve often encountered. Isn’t that the case, that people just expand an idea or something that should be an article, try and expand it to the 300 pages because they think it’s a good idea or think it’s necessary for their career?

Abhijit Bhaduri:

Well, there’s a very famous critic statement that there’s a thin article struggling to come out of that fat book. So that’s very true that many a times, it’s just the idea is not deep enough. So that’s probably very true.

Naren Aryal:

Yeah. And I’ll say this, a book is still a moment in time. It’s a substantive work where you can go to your audience, you can go to media and people still pay attention. Whereas they may not pay attention to a LinkedIn post or a LinkedIn Live, Mikko, or an article in that same way. There’s still something magical about a book, and I’ve seen it and you all have seen it.

Stuart Crainer:

Please send in your questions. And it’s great to see so many people we know from the Thinkers50 Community joining us. What about books in the age of AI? Somebody’s pointed out in the comments and questions that AI could be generating the comments and questions, which is a very cynical view of the world. But you can write books with AI?

Naren Aryal:

Yeah, you can absolutely write books with AI. And we all have seen books that have been written almost exclusively by AI. And what I liken it to, it’s like reading a Wikipedia article on a given subject matter. You’re going to get baseline, superficial facts, maybe an exception to a rule, but you’re not going to get the analysis that I think only humans with experience in a particular subject matter can deliver. Now, is there a place for AI? Of course there is, and research and post-writing, but I can spot it a mile away and I’d be curious to hear what everyone else here thinks.

Stuart Crainer:

Abhijit?

Abhijit Bhaduri:

Yeah, I think it’s really like saying that you can have a million copies of the Mona Lisa, but today, the original is still worth 870 million. So the original thinking always sort of shines through. A book must fundamentally simplify three kinds of questions. There’s a why book, there’s a how-to book and there’s a what do I do about it kind of a book. The bestsellers are the ones which address all three. And that happens when you bring in your own experience and then you are putting that across in a coherent fashion. So that takes craft. So can you generate a photograph with AI? Yes, but we still invite an actual human photographer for an important event. So I think it’s the same stuff.

Stuart Crainer:

I suppose the question somebody’s raised about how can we integrate AI into the book-writing process or the publishing process? It must have a role there in somewhere. Naren?

Naren Aryal:

Yeah. I think the roles that I’ve seen most effective are on the research side and then on the post-writing side and what I call the cleanup side. And in the middle is, and you’ll see this with all the best books, is something that comes out of the author’s head and the author’s heart. It’s a tool. Abhijit, you’re going through this right now.

Abhijit Bhaduri:

Yeah. I think for me, the process of writing is organic. So you do have ideas and thoughts which show up as LinkedIn posts, comes up through LinkedIn newsletters. Sometimes you combine those and you get the outline of a thought process. And it’s not something that you can churn out in like two days. It’s a very long-drawn process. And the more you’ve thought about it, the sharper your thinking is. So that’s how I would describe it. Use AI for maybe sometimes thinking through, this is the way that I’m putting the argument, what’s the counterargument? That’s a great way to use AI or to say that, what else have people said about this subject? When have people disagreed? So use it as a critic. That’s a great way to use it, but the writing must reflect your own voice. So that way it’s very different.

Mikko Leskelä:

Stuart, can I lift a couple of questions out of the comments? There’s Danny… and Danny Wareham is asking, because the way the discussion was framed just a while ago was that we were thinking, what does the author get out of writing the book? But he’s raising the question of, if there’s often a different motive for a book that is on a new, on an unexplored subject that actually wants to start something new, some new discussion or some new area of expertise, so the book would actually be a creation of something in the real world. So it kind of changes the aspect a little bit.

Stuart Crainer:

Yeah, I think the process of writing a book, a number of people have commented on the process of writing a book is a learning process as well for the author.

Naren Aryal:

Yeah. And if I could just jump in, it is a process, and anytime you try to circumvent the process, the final product, the manuscript will not be as good as it possibly can be. Now, we don’t want to overdo it and continue editing a hundred times, but you have to go through that process and the end result will be a better book because of it. And I’ve seen it so many times. And it’s an endurance race, writing a book. Nothing’s ever easy. And those that go through the process, and integrating AI into the process is part of it these days more and more. But again, process is the keyword you said, Stuart.

Stuart Crainer:

An endurance race. What about times… Let’s talk about something practical as well. I mean, well, the first practical element is, can people make money from business books? How many people make money from them? I know Mikko mentioned getting clients as a result, but is that how people should be measuring it, income from royalties, income from clients?

Naren Aryal:

Very few authors make a living being just authors, right? And so everyone should know that, and particularly in the world of business books. And so for example, Mel Robbins, she makes a living doing a lot of things, but if she wanted, she could just be an author. I always tell people to know your ‘why’, right? Why are you doing this book? Because it’s a lot of effort. It’s an endurance race. We talked about that. And so that why is typically using the book to leverage how you monetize, and how you monetize may be consulting, may be keynote speaking, may be seminars, may be webinars. It could be many things. And so the book is a vehicle to help you get your ideas out there, to help you monetize however you monetize. Again, most authors are not going to make a living just selling books.

Abhijit Bhaduri:

Yeah. If you’re not from the royal family, you can’t live off royalty. That’s the thumb rule. Having said that, I really think it’s easy to say that, it’s really, the book is the beginning of the process, and then there are derivatives such as keynotes. There are podcasts, there are articles. The book leads to further books. So all of them put together is the way that you look at it. And if this is integrated with the work that you do, in my case, this is the work that I do. So I write about the work that I’ve done with clients or what I’m working on right now. So then if it’s grounded in reality, it always furthers that whole process. So that’s how I would think about it. It’s always in the derivatives.

Naren Aryal:

Yeah. And one more point about that is you should be conscious and align every stage, every stage in the process to achieve your why. And that means in the editorial stage, in the deciding which formats to publish in, in the distribution and the marketing, understand what this book is going to do for you and your career and make decisions that align with that understanding.

Stuart Crainer:

And how long’s the endurance race, Naren? How long is the process? Because people often don’t understand the actual book publishing process, the timescales involved. They either come to you with an idea or a manuscript that they have had lying around or they’ve been working on for years. What kind of timescales are you talking about?

Naren Aryal:

Well, I’ve seen it happen in as little as three months. I’ve seen it happen in 10 years. And I know that’s a wide range, but this goes into the ‘how are you publishing’? Self-publishing is going to be far faster to market. Traditional publishing is just going to take longer. You have to find an agent, you have to put a proposal together, you have to pitch the big houses, and all that typically can take 18 months to 24 months, is what I’ve seen. And one of the things that have happened recently is with the emergence of self-publishing and other forms of publishing like hybrid where Amplify is involved, that has really shrunk now down to on average between six to 12 months.

Mikko Leskelä:

Yeah. That’s one of the underlying reasons for us to start collaborating with Amplify was their hybrid model and being able to offer speed-to-market to the authors. I mean, imagine in this kind of world that we live in if it takes 24 months for you to get your ideas out if you want to do it in the long form. Could you, Naren, comment a little bit on the trade-offs, that how can a hybrid publisher do it so fast and what do we lose in the process, or do we lose anything?

Naren Aryal:

Yeah. Well, I think the big thing is we’re not reliant on literary agents bringing us projects, right? So that cuts out six months right there. And we’re also not beholden to some release schedule, artificial release schedule, be it fall or spring in the year. And so we continuously work on projects as they come in and we try to get them out as fast as possible. And so when you’re talking about a topic like AI, you just can’t wait two years to get your idea out there, because Abhijit knows this, right? And he knows this all too well. We’ll work on his book. So speed becomes critical, and we’re just aligned to move fast. We’re not a huge organisation. And so that’s part of our value proposition and everything that we do is acknowledging the fact that speed-to-market is necessary.

Stuart Crainer:

Interesting.

Abhijit Bhaduri:

Yeah.

Stuart Crainer:

Yeah. Sorry, Abhijit. Go ahead.

Abhijit Bhaduri:

One of the ways to think about it is you start thinking about your idea and you start writing when you get clarity. So that’s the whole process. And from there, then you find an agent, then you go through the agent to reach the publisher. Some publisher is going to take six months to respond back to you. Then you respond back to the publisher with some changes. And this entire process is very tedious and very frustrating. So the piece to think about is you cut down the entire process of getting this book to market, provided you’ve thought about the idea long enough. Otherwise, you can get a book fast to the market, but it’s not going to survive there. So there are different things. So I think you cannot underestimate the power of a lot of thought going into what you are writing and why should somebody spend time reading your book, because remember, you’re competing in the age of Netflix.

A book, I could have a choice of watching a great Netflix show with Oscar Award winners, or I could read your book. So that’s the competition. So the moment you start thinking about it, speed matters, quality matters, the ability to simplify ideas matters. So all of this comes together when you write a business book.

Naren Aryal:

Mikko, one other comment on that, obviously we want to move as fast as possible. A lot of these projects require speed-to-market, but where you don’t want to compromise is the quality. And so it’s a real balancing act, right? You can get the book out as fast as humanly possible. And if the quality of the writing and the messaging is subpar, it’s not going to help you fulfill your goals. It’s a balancing act.

Mikko Leskelä:

Yeah. Well, let’s take Abhijit’s next book as an example. I mean, when did you write the contract and when is the book in the market?

Naren Aryal:

Abhijit is working on some record speeds here, so I’ll let him…

Mikko Leskelä:

Yeah, I mean…

Abhijit Bhaduri:

So this particular book that I’m working on is really around how our identity evolves in the age of AI. In some sense, it continues from where my previous book, Career 3.0 finished. Then, I said, “This is how careers are changing.” And this book explores the second part. I mean, a lot of the conversation is only about skills and about job loss, but the real loss is what happens to our identity, who we are. So that’s really what it was. And I’ve written so many posts about it in the past. Even now, if you see the last 10 posts or last couple of newsletters on LinkedIn, you’ll find the same ideas there. And then you also put polls, you get the readers involved and you are writing in parallel. So I think it’s really the whole process of writing could take you whatever, it could take you three months or six months.

But if you think about it, we spend… If you write about 3,000 words a day or 5,000, if you really write fast, a 50,000-word book should take you, theoretically, 10 days if you’re writing every day for 5,000 words, but that’s impossible and I certainly can’t do it. But this whole process is really also about an iterative way of refining your idea, putting it together, simplifying it, rewriting it, doing a draft. So it’s an iterative process.

Mikko Leskelä:

Yeah. But the timeline, you signed the contract when, and when is the book out?

Naren Aryal:

Sure, sure, sure. So, I think we got started two or three months ago. And now, the book is written. In two months ago, the book is written now and we’re in book production. One of the things that we can do with this flexibility is, for example, start working on a cover even before the book is written, once you get clarity on the title and subtitle. So, we’re going to have this book out in six months.

Mikko Leskelä:

Okay. So, eight months time to market. Wow.

Stuart Crainer:

I think it’s worth noting, the length of books has changed, certainly over the time I’ve been involved with books. Like 20 odd years ago, books were routinely, 80 to 90,000 words was commonplace. And the American market liked bigger books. So, I remember writing books that were 50 or 60,000 for the UK market. And when they were published in America, they published on thicker paper, so it seemed like a bigger book. But books generally have got shorter. And that’s right, Naren, isn’t it? 50, 60,000 is a decent length for a book now.

Naren Aryal:

Yeah. I think 50,000 is probably on average the length of the book that we work on in this genre, in the business genre.

Stuart Crainer:

What about the longevity of books? I think we’ve talked about the… you should go into it with a clear idea of what you want to achieve. But a lot of people in the Thinkers50 Community in particular tend to write one book. And as they’re promoting it, they’re thinking about the next book. And often, I think people rush into writing one book after another and they create their own kind of a treadmill. But the books that succeed, say something like Blue Ocean Strategy, they didn’t really have any need to rush into writing a sequel. And I think books often have a longevity which people underestimate often.

Naren Aryal:

A book needs time to do its thing, and so you don’t want to follow up a book within a year’s time with a second book. And this is an extreme example, but think about Atomic Habits. How long has that book been out there? Has there been a sequel? I don’t think so.

Mikko Leskelä:

Yeah. Hey, Frank Koldberg is asking a very interesting question. Also, Naren, you’re writing your book with two co-authors. And some of the books that we will publish together have a couple of authors, for example, the one with Poornima Luthra. Frank is asking that to what extent is collaborative book-writing likely to increase. Has it increased, because it truly looks like it?

Naren Aryal:

You know what? That’s a great comment. I think anecdotally it has increased. I don’t have data to back that up. There’s some pros and some cons, I suppose. But the biggest advantage that I see is you get to share in the writing process, two sets of ideas as opposed to one, clarity on an idea. And the big one is when it comes to marketing, you have two marketers as opposed to one. And so, maybe this is a good segue into marketing, but an author must be involved and two authors even better.

Mikko Leskelä:

Can I propose a counter argument or a counter example? There’s at times books that have too many writers, too many authors. And like these compendiums, that it looks like that when they… I mean, they’re made in a way that you would count on many people actually doing marketing. But when nobody actually owns the content and has an incentive to risk very much personally to stand behind the book, nobody ends up marketing it. So, a lot of books with a lot of authors don’t actually sell that well. It may also have to do with the format, but adding writers doesn’t always increase the marketing effort.

Naren Aryal:

Yeah. Yeah, that’s a good point. And I’ll draw a distinction between co-authors, two authors, three authors versus contributors. Contributors don’t have skin in the game. Sure, I’ll contribute a paragraph, but there’s no accountability in terms of all the other steps. Good point.

Mikko Leskelä:

So, where’s the line? Is it two authors or three authors in your next one?

Naren Aryal:

Well, what I see most often is two authors. And so, with all due apologies to Bill Sherman and Peter Winick, who I’ve co-authored a book with, three is just fine as well.

Stuart Crainer:

Somebody’s asking about the use of ghostwriters. A good idea? A bad idea? It depends on the situation, doesn’t it?

Naren Aryal:

Yeah. And so, I had a newfound respect for the writing process going through this book that I’m writing, and it’s a lot of work. And so, I’m running a company, I’ve got a day job, a big day job. And then you put book writing on top of everything else that people are doing, it’s nearly impossible. And so, you have to ask yourself, are you talented enough of a writer? And you have to be objective. Are you talented enough of a writer to take your ideas and do them justice in the written world, in the written word? And do you have the time to do it effectively? And if the answer is no to one or two, a ghostwriter is a fantastic alternative, particularly there’s some great ghostwriters out there. It will add to the cost of the project quite significantly. So, again, it’s a trade-off. But in terms of all the books that we published, probably 30% are ghostwritten.

Mikko Leskelä:

Naren, what kind of money are we talking about? I mean, what kind of cost for-

Naren Aryal:

I’m going to give you a wide range, because it is a wide range. I’ll say anywhere from 30,000 US all the way, believe it or not, I’ve done a book that was 225,000. But most of them fall between 30,000 and 70,000 US for a ghostwrite. And this person is in charge of doing all the writing, all the rewriting. And think about it, you’re hiring somebody for a six-month full-time job. So, while it seems like a lot of money, you’re getting a lot of value if in fact the collaboration is effective.

Stuart Crainer:

We can’t all be like Abhijit, churning out 3,000 words every day. Do you think of using a ghostwriter, Abhijit?

Abhijit Bhaduri:

I wouldn’t find it very interesting. It’s like, then what’s the difference between using AI versus using a ghostwriter? So, that’s how I think about it, because my process of writing also brings clarity to what I’m saying. Because you write a paragraph and you read it and say, “Oh, gosh, I don’t know why I wrote that.” You strike it off, you rewrite it. So, the process for me, that’s how I write. I do multiple drafts. So, I write fast, but I do multiple drafts, even for the newsletters and all of that. So, each one of them is a process of refining your idea. And that’s really the magic of writing. So ,I really enjoy the whole process of writing. That’s the honest truth. So, I wouldn’t do it. It’s like sharing an ice cream. I wouldn’t do it.

Stuart Crainer:

Ben Slight makes a comment. There are shades between ghostwriting, development, editing, et cetera, et cetera. It’s a very tailored process. I mean, I’ve been involved in some books that have been brought to me that need rewriting or a complete rewrite, or books that need a slight edit. Or you go to people as a ghostwriter and they barely have an idea. And you have to make the book work one way or another to earn your money. So, yes. So, I think there are different shades in ghostwriting and editing.

Naren Aryal:

Stuart, I’ll add one more shade, writing coach. And so, that is something we authors use all the time, particularly if you haven’t been through it once before. A writing coach is a great resource. Keeps you accountable, keeps you on a schedule, edit as you go. And so, that’s another option.

Stuart Crainer:

There’s quite a few questions about social media and social media followers. Do you need to have a huge number of followers? Well, obviously, having a huge number of social media followers one way or another makes you more attractive to a publisher, but is it necessary?

Naren Aryal:

Well, IBG, it’s got 750,000 LinkedIn followers, so I would say it’s a plus. I would say it’s a plus, but I would also say that the author’s best friend when it comes to marketing a book is their email list, way more than social media.

Stuart Crainer:

And the onus is on the author to promote the book. And it used to be decades ago, authors used to sit back and wait for the publisher’s marketing team to direct them to go to signings, et cetera. But now, I think as we’ve seen in some of the comments that people like Ruth Goatian, and see each day as launch day, and are promoting their book day after day. The author’s got to take the initiative. Abhijit?

Abhijit Bhaduri:

I absolutely agree. The way I would describe it is when you publish the book, the day the book hits the bookshelf, it’s the equivalent of it’s the wedding day versus marriage. Marriage lasts you a couple of years, whereas the wedding is just one day. So, the book launch is the wedding day. You engage with a community. So, that community really is your set of readers, which is why, for me, the process of writing, if you look at my last book, Career 3.0, the origin was a conversation about some trends. It was a LinkedIn post that eventually became a newsletter piece. And then within that, as I was writing, I was bouncing the ideas with the readers in real time and then the book actually brings together a lot of ideas, plus something different. So, you pepper it with your own observations. You talk about others’ examples.

And there are examples of people here in the audience today who have been featured in that particular book, because they are real people. That’s the whole process. To me, when you’re doing that, it always brings in something which no AI can ever replicate. So, for me, that’s the process of writing. It’s a very long-drawn process. It’s iterative. And then there is a process of transcribing it. So, you get your ideas together, put it in a sequence and write it out. So, that’s what is different.

Stuart Crainer:

Tamsin Webster is making a number of really, really useful comments and says the book is a snapshot in time. And the community is how you keep the book alive and the idea relevant.

Abhijit Bhaduri:

Absolutely. Perfect.

Stuart Crainer:

So, I think what Tamsin’s saying, a book isn’t an end point. It’s got to be part of building a community or it’s got to offer interactions, or something, or develop relationships with readers.

Naren Aryal:

That’s a great point. And that’s a great point. And what I always say is, so you’ve written the book, you’ve had a pub date, congratulations. This is an American Football analogy. You’re at the 50 yard line, meaning you are halfway home.

Mikko Leskelä:

Abhijit, I’m curious to hear, I mean, with your kind of LinkedIn following and you must have also an email list, do you? What’s happening? I mean, how do you market your book? I mean, you have it now coming out in a few months’ time. What’s happening at the moment? What will happen when the book is out?

Abhijit Bhaduri:

So, right now, I’m actually in the process of refining the idea, so I like to do multiple drafts. So, for me, when you are printing it, I’m almost writing to the very last day. So, that’s one part of it. But you bounce the ideas off. Even now, if you see, I mean, I’ve put a whole bunch of them in my newsletter on LinkedIn. I’ve put articles on my own website, abhijitbhaduri.com. It’s there on Substack in another different format. And you see the response. And then from that you kind of add the idea and say, “Oh, maybe this didn’t work.” Then you create a small post. So, it’s a very iterative process. So, I’m writing in real time in conversation with the readers. That I think is absolutely precious.

A larger community of readers actually gets you a lot more perspectives about writing, so that is the most powerful thing which you can always leverage. And you write for a reader, the reader introduces you to their community, the community then takes the book forward. So, it’s a really second order effect that you are looking at.

Mikko Leskelä:

You already tell them that this is part of the process of writing a book? Or is it just conversation and then you at some point-

Abhijit Bhaduri:

No, it is. It is. I mean, so I write about a theme. So, when I was writing Career 3.0, all of it was about how careers are shifting, because I was doing columns for newspapers, as well as my own newsletters, et cetera. So, you’re writing about different trends. You read a statistic, you’d see an example of somebody doing something, and then you kind of begin to see a trend from your own perspective. You’re not picking up a trend from a newspaper report. You are actually watching something happening in real time. And as you read, more writers who have written about this. So, right now, for example, if I look at the world of identity, you’re not just talking about the academics who are writing about it. You also see what’s happening in real time. I coach executives.

So, for example, somebody was telling me the other day, I used to be a software writer, now I’m just validating what AI creates. It’s a degradation of your professional work identity. To me, that line was so powerful. And I thought, my God, I mean, wow, that sounds like something that you want to crystallize. And I had talked about the idea a little bit before, but this line put everything together. And then I heard many more versions. So, it’s really like if you say, look around at all the things which are read, you’ll find a lot more. So, it’s that process also.

Naren Aryal:

Hey, Mikko, and I suspect if you look at Abhijit’s LinkedIn starting now and moving toward launch, you’re going to see a lot more on identity as related to AI. His job, and all authors’ jobs in this period, even pre pre-sale, is to cultivate an audience, get them interested in what the book’s topic is about. And in the book itself, he’s got 300 pieces of content that he can start dribbling out over the next few months. So, when he makes that ultimate ask of pre-ordering his book, he’s done the legwork, established a connection on this specific topic.

Mikko Leskelä:

Yeah. Here’s a hot tip to everybody who’s interested in Abhijit’s topic. Subscribe to his newsletter, you get to become part of the book writing process, I guess. Challenge-

Abhijit Bhaduri:

Thank you. Thank you. I would love it.

Stuart Crainer:

So, it’s not too different from what Charles Dickens was doing in the 19th century, writing books in installments and presumably along the way, taking in comments from his audience.

Mikko Leskelä:

Yeah. Jennifer Zach was asking that… is it different. Is there a difference of value between email lists and LinkedIn newsletter lists? Have you noticed anything such? I don’t know. I don’t have a newsletter.

Abhijit Bhaduri:

So, I don’t have an email list. Whatever I do, I have a community that I reach out to. So, everything from a poll to a post, to a newsletter, to a video, to a podcast, all of it, but there is a continuing piece. So, if you really think about it, I wrote Dreamers and Unicorns, which was the book I wrote in I think 2020. In 2022, I did Career 3.0. So, Dreamers and Unicorns had one small section on… So, it was like a couple of pages in Dreamers and Unicorns. That also is the title of my newsletter. It’s also the title of my podcast.

And then as you bring that in, those conversations actually refine your own ideas. So, it’s a very normal, ongoing process. I mean, maybe somebody who writes a phenomenal book, those are the guys who are really talented and gifted. I just think I like to work along with my audience and build that. So, for me, that’s the process that I find valuable.

Naren Aryal:

And obviously, you can harvest email contacts through your newsletter as well, so that’s something to think about.

Abhijit Bhaduri:

If the idea is good, people reach out to you and your newsletter subscriber list grows. But if your ideas are not very good… I mean, I’m sure in your bookshelf, you have a book which you thought was good. When you read a couple of pages, you say, “It’s not all that great.” So, yes, you will get royalty when you sell the book, but you get loyalty when the person continues to read and engage with you. So, for me, that’s more precious.

Mikko Leskelä:

I have to say I like your workplace with the royalties and the loyalties.

Stuart Crainer:

So, let’s talk about the market. I mean, the received wisdom is the books are historical, hard copy books. And the main markets, the audio market and the ebook market. What’s your views on that, Naren? Audiobooks, for instance, have grown a lot in recent years.

Naren Aryal:

Yeah, that’s right. So, the audiobook market is growing. I think just the trends over the last few years, the audiobook market is growing, the ebook market is staying flat, and to everyone’s surprise, the physical hardcover book or physical book continues to hold its own. And so, the reason is… Abhijit’s book’s coming out, it’s going to be very difficult for him to sign an ebook. And so, people just love still the physical book. And as the book gets out into the wild, what you’ll see typically is the percentage of ebook and audiobook sales will go up and the percentage of physical book copies will go down. And that’s a good thing to keep in mind as you track the book, and to see if it’s getting into other levels and other communities.

Stuart Crainer:

So, where do you think we’ll be in 10 years time then, Naren? Will the balance have changed dramatically?

Naren Aryal:

You know what? My prediction is it will not change dramatically because what I’ve said about the physical copy, it’s still a personal attack, personal connection, something you can sign, something you can hand to somebody, for keynote speakers. They’re selling them at the back of the room. I could be wrong. I probably am wrong. I think it’s going to hold steady where we are today.

Abhijit Bhaduri:

I’d agree with that. I think it’s going to be an end world. You’ll have people who prefer to listen to a book as they are walking somewhere or they’re going on their commute. Some people like to read it on Kindle, because it’s easy to take stuff along. I do all of the above. I listen to audiobooks. I am a very avid podcast consumer. I also take my phone along and I read on the phone. I read on the Kindle and I read physical books, so I think it’s a combination. All of us do all of the above.

Stuart Crainer:

Abhijit, thank you very… As we said, this is a webinar of two halves. Thank you very much for joining us for the first half. Really appreciate your insights. As Mikko said, please feel free to join up, join Abhijit’s newsletter and following him on LinkedIn. And of course, buy his books, existing books and his forthcoming books. Abhijit, thank you very much.

Mikko Leskelä:

The audience is getting restless. They’re talking about drinking games and all of that. Maybe we should give them a QR code to look at, just to… Just as a reminder, you can go there and learn a little bit more about our imprint with Amplify Publishing Group. We have, at the moment, five books already in the making coming out end of this year, and more to come hopefully with you. Stuart?

Stuart Crainer:

Yeah. So, now we’d like to welcome Dorie Clark to the discussion. Dorie helps individuals and organisations think more strategically about reinvention, visibility, and long-term success. Her books include The Long Game, Stand Out, Reinventing You, and Entrepreneurial You. Earlier in her career, Dorie worked as a journalist, a presidential campaign spokesman and a producer of a Grammy winning jazz album. Experiences that continue to shape her perspective on influence, narrative and credibility. She also writes musical theatre but that’s another webinar. Welcome, Dorie. And perhaps you can pose the first question to Dorie, Mikko.

Mikko Leskelä:

I actually don’t have a question yet. I have some very hard proof that Dorie is actually the queen of building a personal brand. Here’s a special issue of HBR from last year with about 20 articles. Six of them were written by Dorie, or are co-authored by Dorie. It’s a special on building a personal brand. Maybe the question is that, Dorie, how did you become that?

Dorie Clark:

Well, thank you, Mikko. And hello, gentlemen. And I appreciate the shout-out. The part that I’m even more proud of is that there were another, I believe five people who published in that issue of HBR about personal brand that were not me, but that were a part of my recognised expert community. And that’s especially meaningful, because one of the things that’s most important to me is trying to help other people elevate their voices and get their ideas heard. And so for me, to answer your question, when it comes to personal brand, I think those things are inextricably entwined. I started my own business working for myself, consulting and coaching, exactly 20 years ago. It was in 2006. And when I began, I suddenly was hit with this problem that I hadn’t anticipated, which was, “Oh my gosh, how do I get clients?” I don’t know why that didn’t occur to me before it was a problem. But it suddenly hit me.

And I thought, “Everybody seems to be a coach, a consultant, they’re offering something. How do you actually get known and get people to understand what you can contribute?” And you might have a sense of that, you might have this kind of inchoate sense, but it’s a different story conveying it to other people. And so I had to learn for myself. And once I did learn for myself, I became really interested in helping other people, because it was a frustrating process, it was an opaque process, and I wanted to just make it easier for other folks.

Mikko Leskelä:

So you have been talking about democratizing thought leadership. Could you give to us the very exact and precise answer now, what’s the role of business books in all of this? In personal branding, in business thought leadership, what is the exact role of the book?

Dorie Clark:

I’ve been listening to the conversation you had earlier with Abhijit, and that was great, and I think we’re all around a similar place with this. One thing that I’ll draw out is that I often advise people, when it comes to writing a business book, that often … This was true for me. It’s the first thing you want to do if you’re excited about ideas. You want to get them out there, you want to make a statement, “Oh, this is going to make my name.” I often advise people, wait longer than you think to write the business book, because it will go much better for you and for everyone in the process, number one, Naren was making this point earlier, if you have a strong platform, if you actually have people to launch the book to.

And number two, if you have been sharing your ideas in other forms, whether it’s being on podcasts or writing articles, or even posting just regularly on LinkedIn to see what resonates, as you guys were discussing. That will help you come up with a better topic for that book so that it’s more likely to ensure its success when it does reach the marketplace.

Naren Aryal:

Hey, Dorie, you’d be surprised that the book guy agrees with you. And the book, as I tell folks, is always part of the platform. It’s a key component of the platform. It can never be the entire platform. And what you just said is proof positive of that.

Dorie Clark:

Yeah. Thank you, Naren. I think that’s so true. The book, I think it almost has this kind of talismanic role for people. It’s like, “Oh, a book. This is it. I’ve made it with a book.” And so we tend to want to rush toward that because it has a mystique or a status, and it’s totally understandable and I was a hundred percent there. The world 15 years ago, 20 years ago, told me to slow my roll and do the platform building first. And that was deeply frustrating, but I understand retrospectively that it actually was a valuable exercise.

Stuart Crainer:

So what were your frustrations, Dorie, when you encountered the book publishing process in the first place?

Dorie Clark:

Well, the-

Stuart Crainer:

In short.

Dorie Clark:

Yeah. The biggest frustration is it’s always insulting to be told you’re not famous enough. It’s like, “Well, what about my ideas? Aren’t they good?” They’re like, “Irrelevant.” So that’s the hard smack in the face that you get early on, and it’s just like, “Oh, okay.” All of this, I think every aspect of publishing, building thought leadership, trying to build a business, if you’re trying to build some kind of a professional service or advisory business, it is just all about eating humble pie in the beginning. And I think that it’s something that I’ve noticed that I find fascinating, because it’s a little bit of a fine line.

And I’d be curious if you guys think this or have seen this as well. But on one hand, I think sometimes we as humans, as individuals, tend to hide behind, “Well, that’s not fair. That’s not right. I want to be evaluated on my own merits,” which is a good line, but I think it’s actually kind of close sometimes in principle, in terms of how it’s lived out with, “I don’t want to humble myself that much. I think I deserve better, and so I’m not going to do those dumb things. I shouldn’t have to do those dumb things.” I think that to cross that chasm, we have to acknowledge, “You know what? I’m actually not quite that important. I do have to do those dumb things.” Everyone has to do those dumb things, in terms of humbling yourself to put your ideas out there and no one reads it at first. And you just have to keep doing it and keep doing it and keep doing it until you actually start to scrape something together and you find out what works.

But it is a really hard, emotionally difficult process, I think, in the beginning, and you have to get through that to get to the other side. Certainly, that’s what I’ve felt. But I’m curious, we heard a little bit from Naren, but Mikko and Stuart, do you agree with that or have you guys experienced that? What are your thoughts?

Stuart Crainer:

Well, I think the relationship between humility and ego is quite interesting in book publishing, isn’t it? Because we have often encountered people with sizable egos, but as you say, publishing is kind of humbling because it leads to people questioning your ideas in a way. It’s actually much more … And it’s much more the case now, it’s much more challenging and interactive and people are much more likely to argue with you than they were 20 or 30 years ago.

Mikko Leskelä:

Yeah.

Dorie Clark:

Yeah.

Mikko Leskelä:

I do get, Dorie, your point about the right timing and being humble and being able to wait, because developing good ideas is a dialogue, and to start with the book is just too robust. It takes a miracle for that to work in today’s world, so you need to have that kind of platform to share and test those ideas first. And that might be the humility part of it all. Or you could just go and do self-publish, something small, and just put it in the market. Not invest that much into it and see how it resonates, and then find out that it doesn’t resonate at all. You will actually need longer time and professional help and even a publisher. In the last session, somebody was asking that, why would you not self-publish? What’s the reason for that? I’d like to hear, Dorie and Naren, your ideas on that.

Dorie Clark:

Yeah. Yeah. Well, do you want to kick it off, Naren, or should I? You obviously have thought a lot about this.

Naren Aryal:

Feel free, then I’ll jump in.

Dorie Clark:

Yeah. Well, I think that there’s a few thoughts. What was very much the case 20 years ago was that there was a huge amount of credibility attached to having a commercial publisher behind you. I think that in the succeeding period of time, what has very much happened is that people recognise in the marketplace that there are appropriate use cases for commercial publishing and appropriate use cases for self or hybrid publishing. And so I think that the credibility gap has really, certainly narrowed or maybe been eliminated entirely. I think that people can write a book that is self or hybrid published and people are like, “Oh, fantastic.” There’s just no difference because it is a very viable choice.

I think that for me, I would say that the circumstances under which commercial publishing would be useful, number one, if you have built a large enough platform, it does allow for a certain subset of people to have a large advance. And that is not the case clearly if you’re funding it yourself. So if you can get a large advance, mazel, that’s a great thing. Typically, that also ties in, because while it is true that, in the end, the author always has to be the person responsible for the marketing, if you have a large enough advance, it does kind of trigger a little bit of a too big to fail situation. And so the publisher is more invested in supporting you with it. So that’s true.

I do also think that most consumers don’t notice or care about who is publishing a book, but in some cases, if you are building your career and you are trying specifically to amass different forms of social proof that can validate your ideas in the marketplace, it can be useful. People have heard of it. “Oh, I know Harvard Business Review Press. I know Harvard Business. I know …” whatever it is. And that can be, I wouldn’t say it’s determinative, but I can say it’s a little extra nod of like, “Oh, these reputable people support it.” So those are a couple of good reasons, but Naren, what do you think?

Naren Aryal:

Yeah, great analysis there. I am a huge fan of self-publishing. More and more authors are succeeding in self-publishing today than ever before. Having said that, more and more authors are self-publishing today more than ever before. So there’s a lot of competition out there. And speaking to what Dorie talked about, the traditional pathway, yeah, it’s a stamp of credibility. And my advice is always the same, if it’s important to you and you understand the time that it takes to get from conceptualization to market, absolutely go for it and get the biggest advance you possibly can get. Not all advances are large enough to make it worth some of the other things that you got to trade off.

And the beauty of where we are today in the book industry is there are options for everybody. There’s no right or wrong answer. We’ve come in and occupied, and there’s other players in the space, the hybrid publishing space, which continues to grow quite a bit. And we’ve been growing along with the market, which is coming to our direction, the non-traditional pathways. So there’s no right or wrong answer, there are just choices, which is, at the end of the day, a great thing.

Stuart Crainer:

How do you measure the success of your book, Dorie. Think about your book, The Long Game. Can you talk us through the process of that? Because it was a bit different from your previous books. How long was the gestation period and what did success look like when you were shaping it?

Dorie Clark:

Yeah.

Mikko Leskelä:

Stuart is trying to ask … Stuart is British, he cannot be as direct as I. He’s asking, how many did you sell and where did you draw the line? What would have been a success? How many copies?

Stuart Crainer:

But there might be other… Dorie’s probably a bit more rounded in her measures of success, is what I’m getting at, Mikko.

Mikko Leskelä:

Yeah. Also, I’m reading this book, How to Be a Brit, and this is just-

Dorie Clark:

Your workplace manual.

Stuart Crainer:

Yeah. But you shouldn’t believe everything you read in books, obviously, Mikko. Anyway, Dorie, how do you measure success with something like The Long Game?

Dorie Clark:

Yeah, thank you. So let me try to answer both of your questions. The literal answer, Mikko, which might sound not even correct, but if you guys can vamp for a minute, I’m happy to look it up in real time and tell you. But I actually don’t even know off the top of my head how many copies I’ve sold of it. An interesting thing about traditional publishers, which probably Naren does it differently, which would be amazing, but they only give you statements every six months for sales, and it’s the trailing six months. So it comes so infrequently, it becomes very, very difficult to track your actual marketing to a sales impact, because you’re getting the data a year later. It’s kind of wild in the modern economy how that works, but it’s very, very common among publishers. And so I don’t actually even know the latest data.

But the way that I think about it, Stuart raises a good point, when you write a book called The Long Game, definitionally, you probably want to take a long-term perspective on it. Otherwise, it’s a bad look. So what I had done with my previous three books is, I was very eager to establish myself and my ideas, and so I also, I’ll be honest, was kind of worried about the nature of the publishing industry. It was changing very fast and I really wasn’t sure. I’m like, “Is publishing going to be around? Is this even going to be a thing?” And I knew I loved books. I wanted to write books, and I’m like, “All right, well, if publishing is going to somehow collapse …” I mean, it didn’t, right? But at the time you’re wondering, “If it’s going to collapse, all right, I need to write a bunch of books fast to get in under this closing door.”

So I ended up publishing at this breakneck speed. Reinventing You in 2013, Stand Out in 2015, Entrepreneurial You in 2017. Boom, boom, boom. And that was great for getting a lot of IP out there and I feel proud of those books. But what I realised, I had heard the publishing advice previously, “The best way to sell your last book is to write the new book.” And what I learned, I think anyway, is that that is true probably if you were writing romance novels or series mysteries. I don’t actually think that’s true for business books, because what you need to do for business books is to have a big idea and just keep sharing it and keep promoting it. Otherwise, I think you’re almost stepping on your own message. And I realised that at a certain point and I thought, “Wait, that’s not what I want to do. I want to have big ideas that make an impact and that actually I am giving sufficient time to promoting.”

You think about Angela Duckworth. She’s been riding high on not even one book. She’s been riding high on one word for like the last decade. So, “Okay, go sister.” Great, she’s getting it out there. And it’s true for so many people. Simon Sinek. He’s written more books, but he’s known for one thing, realistically, in the marketplace. I think about people who have done the self-publishing route, like a colleague of mine named Hal Elrod, who wrote a book called The Miracle Morning. He’s literally been promoting it for a decade and there are still people who haven’t heard of it. And so it’s almost like a limitless audience and you have to recognise that, that there needs to be a lot more repetition and iteration than you think.

So for The Long Game, I decided I would spend five years promoting it, and so that is what I have done. I have just signed a contract for my next book, and so now I’m working on that. But I’ve spent a good half decade promoting the concepts of strategic thinking in The Long Game, and I will continue to do so.

Stuart Crainer:

I think it’s interesting, I think that sales are often … As Dorie said, the figures you get from the publishers tend not to be that helpful, and Rufus mentioned that in the comments as well. And sales are often misleading. I worked on a book project with a famous strategy guy, and we said to him, “What does success look like in this project?” And he said, “Well, to be honest, the seven guys in the Pentagon, I would like each of them to have a copy of the book.”

Stuart Crainer:

And then when the book came out, we talked to him and said, “The guys in the Pentagon, did they get the book?” He said, “Yeah.” He said, “I’ve got millions of dollars of consulting with those seven guys.” So selling five million copies throughout the world is nice, but it’s not necessary for most of these books. And I think your comment, Dorie, as well about the longevity of books, I think you’ve got to be … Authors can be more patient to promote and maximize the impact. The impact isn’t a matter of just a month or two, it is over an extended period.

Dorie Clark:

That’s really true, Stuart. And I’ll say also, part of, literally for all of us, the idea of playing the long game is that there are peer pressures, societal pressures, that I think somehow as authors we tend to succumb to. Because this is just natural, this is just conversation, it’s not like people are doing a bad thing, but the minute you publish a book, it’s been out for five seconds, they’re like, “So what’s the next one?” And you feel like, as a result, that you need an answer for that. And I think that often the proper response is, “This is what I’m working on. I’m going to keep working on this.” But it sounds boring and it sounds like, “Oh, you don’t have a good answer.” But you have to resist that internal pressure to come up with something pleasing, “Oh, here’s my next thing,” because jumping to the wrong thing prematurely, I have learned, I think is less helpful.

Naren Aryal:

Hey, Dorie, you said five years, and I love that. And of course, we’d expect that from you, the long game. I tell authors, “This is what you’re doing for the next year. You’re putting your head down. You’re not going to check Amazon daily or hourly or every 15 minutes. This is what you’re doing. You put a lot of time, energy, and sometimes money into it. Get this idea out there as wide as possible.” And so five years, kudos. Excellent. Great advice.

Dorie Clark:

Yeah. Yeah, thank you. I appreciate it. And I’m curious, from a Thinkers50 perspective, Stuart and Mikko, when you think about a business book, I know nowadays you guys are having awards for the list of all time great business books. You have a list for top business books of the year. So obviously this has significance, but in this world of changing modalities, people say, “Well, does it have to be a book? Maybe it could be a podcast series or whatever.” It still seems to have a privileged place, at least in terms of the recognition in some ways. So how do you think about it as a building block of people’s IP or their thought leadership?

Stuart Crainer:

Well, books are beautiful things, and the business books, when they’re done well, offer new insights into people’s ideas, great examples, and are motivational and kind of nail things down. And you point to Angela Duckworth and Simon Sinek, I think the attraction of people like that, and say Jim Collins as well, is that kind of distillation. So a feeling that people have taken an idea, done the research, and have really distilled it down. And I think it’s very, very powerful in book form. It doesn’t quite work the same way in a podcast or the other channels of content which are utilized these days, I think. Because it is a statement. A book is a statement, isn’t it? “This is where my thinking is at,” and you’re setting yourself up and that goes back to the humility-ego thing. “What do you think, Mikko?

Mikko Leskelä:

Yeah, I also do think that because you cannot … Of course, we all read a lot of books, but you cannot really read a lot of books. I mean, truly read and truly understand you. So you need to choose very wisely. And the way we source the ideas, for example, the best management book list, is that we listen to the community around us, who they’re reading. Well, I don’t want to take an example. I could take a very good example from their books … I can’t. I can’t. It tells us a lot. Again, we are not very interested in how many copies that book sold, even if we … That is interesting, but more interesting is who has actually read the book and made good comments on it.

And there’s this world of these blurbs that we are all familiar with, from people who haven’t really read the book. And then there’s those discussions when somebody comes to you and says, “I read this truly interesting book and I have this thought because of it.” And then you know that there’s actually something into it. And so we chase after those. The book as a format is the ultimate test, because it takes time to read a book. Maybe that’s why it’s so appreciated.

Stuart Crainer:

A question for you, Dorie, the international success of your book, was that important or something you targeted, like particular markets, you want to be big in Germany or you want to be big in Asia or anything like that? How important has it been to you?

Dorie Clark:

Yeah, I certainly was interested in it. My books have been translated into about, I think it’s either 14 or 15 languages, which is wonderful. And it’s super fun for me. I mean, I have a shelf over here of international copies. I wanted it to be reachable for other people, first of all, so the ideas could spread. Second of all, because certainly at the outset of my career in particular, I was like, “Oh my gosh, I want to travel to all these places. This is a fantastic opportunity to do that.” And I’ve been lucky enough to give book talks everywhere from Thailand to France to Hong Kong.

So that’s been a lot of fun. I think that certain markets, and Naren I’m sure, knows much more about this than I do, certain markets are harder to get translations in. So for instance, in a lot of the European markets, many of the people actually speak English anyway. And so they’re just going to buy an English copy. So it really takes a lot for a book, for instance, maybe to be translated into Finnish or something like that because people will just buy the original book. But in Asia, that’s a very heavy translation market. So I’ve got lots of Asian translations, which is wonderful. Something that was actually particularly exciting for me because I felt like, oh, they get it. This is like a sign they get it, is the long game apparently has… I have heard multiple reports, multiple uncorrelated reports, so I believe this to be accurate, has actually become quite popular in Japan.

And that’s really cool because Japan is in many ways the epitome of a long game society. They internationally are the place that has the largest concentration of businesses that have been around literally for hundreds of years. Some businesses have been around close to 1000 years operating continuously. So this is very much a part of the culture. And so for the book to have resonated there, to me, that’s a sign of, oh, good. It accomplished what I wanted it to do because for people who would appreciate such a thing, I wanted them to see it as a good exemplar of that mindset.

Stuart Crainer:

Can you talk, Dorie, about the relationship between the book and your keynotes? At what stage does the keynote emerge? Or does it create a market for your keynotes? In what way do the things work together?

Dorie Clark:

The books definitely create a market for the keynote, absolutely. The caveat around it is that you need to always be mindful, like what is the goal of the book and how does it tie into keynotes or not? So for instance, I’ll tell you what did not drive keynotes. I mean, and it’s okay because I wasn’t intended. Entrepreneurial You, if you think for two seconds, you can probably imagine not super interesting to a corporate audience. That’s okay.

One of the things that is different or notable about my business is that I’ve never actually been willing to commit definitively to either B2B or B2C or as an orientation. I like doing both. And so I actually have sort of embraced that as a unique part of my business model, is that I do plenty of B2B, business to business stuff and do talks for corporate audiences. They really like The Long Game, for instance. So long-term strategy, companies like that. I would say also, and you can draw an asterisk because sometimes people are concerned, but in general, they like iReinventing You because companies know that at the enterprise level, they need reinvention. At the individual level, they want their employees who maybe are doing something that is less currently useful to the company to be able to pivot into something more useful. So that’s been positive.

So I have anchors there. Entrepreneurial You was really a bid to build my B2C business, which is involving my recognized expert course and community, which over the past 10 years has become really quite robust. We’ve got over 1000 people in it. And so I enjoy being able to speak to both of those markets, but I think the question is always, for each individual book, what purpose do you want it to solve in terms of your overall business flywheel? I’m curious, Naren, you have gotten to have a bird’s eye view of all of this. Is there someone that you’ve worked with or that you know of in the marketplace that you feel like has done a really fantastic job of having their book become a flywheel for their business?

Naren Aryal:

Yeah, a lot of examples. And let’s just go back to the keynote example first. And there are keynotes that end up as books as well, right? So it doesn’t always have to be a book driving keynote. And we’ve got examples of authors that will sell 75% of their books in connection with the keynote. And so it’s all about being intentional, right? We go back to the why. What’s a win look like for you? And so for author A may just be purely book sales. This person is in the minority. For author B, C, and D, it may be to unearth those keynote opportunities because that’s how they monetize. And so yeah, it’s really about understanding what moves the needle for you.

And listening to you speak, Dorie, I love how intentional you were and how you had a mission and a purpose for every book. And you correlated the book to a particular market that you wanted to go after. And so that intentionality is something that I think a lot of people can learn from.

Mikko Leskelä:

I also do believe that, Dorie, the fact that you are also in the B2C market, I mean, you’re deep in the B2C market. It does require more skill and more planning. It’s easier to… I mean, the tickets in the B2B market are so big that you can… Once you kind of find the right message, you can sell projects worth hundreds of thousands or even millions, but to convince each and every one of those readers to actually buy your product after the book, that is quite a trick.

Naren Aryal:

Yeah. I tell people to pick a lane. Are you B2B or B2C? And so you have defied that bit of advice, it seems. And so there’s some risks associated with that, right? When you don’t have a finely tuned idea of your target market, what do they say if you’re writing for everybody, you’re writing for nobody, which is true, but there are some instances where you can make it work and it seems like you’ve done that.

Dorie Clark:

Yeah. Thank you. I mean, and to be clear, for a decade, for the first decade of my business, I was strictly B2B. So I had built that up. I think that if you were trying to establish both simultaneously, it would be really difficult. What I started to come across once I hit about the 10-year mark in my business was that there were a lot of people that were coming to me that basically had a variation of, “Your business looks really cool. How do I build something like that? I would like to learn how to build something like that myself.” And so I discovered it was gratifying to be able to help them do that and to hopefully get there faster and to make an impact with their own ideas.

Stuart Crainer:

Within that community you’ve created, Dorie, have attitudes to books changed? Do people see, within your community, do people see books as ways to advance their careers?

Dorie Clark:

I think that there still very much is the goal of writing books and having that as kind of a capstone of your ideas. It’s not the only game in town. There are certainly other goals that people have. Things that get talked about frequently in the community are writing for high profile publications, building a paid speaking career, books for sure. I think those are often some of the more obvious markers above and beyond just growing your business. But literally just a week ago, I did a post on LinkedIn and it was me holding a stack of books. And it was like the latest tranche essentially because so many people in the community have published books and they’re kind enough to send them to me, but here’s the new crop of people and celebrating them, putting their ideas out there. But it still is very much a goal and I think an aspirational marker of like, yes, I have arrived, I am putting my stake in the ground in terms of intellectual property.

Stuart Crainer:

And where do you see the book market going in 10 years? In another 10 years, do you think you’ll be publishing hard copy books?

Dorie Clark:

I mean, I hope so. I have grown up with books like you guys did, and I love them. I think that for people who are into books, they are really into books. It’s almost like a security blanket, right? If you go to some event and it’s horrible, it’s like, well, if I have this, then I don’t have to be bored. I can just… Your special friend that you bring along with you. But I certainly recognise that it’s really interesting. There is a gathering of authors that I go to that my friend Mike McCallowitz organises. And every year it’s people who have been kind of successful authors and it’s like a strategy session of sorts where we trade ideas and talk about the market and just trade best practices. And I’ve been going for three years. And one of the themes that keeps getting hammered at all this is that ironically, many of us, to the point that was discussed earlier when you were on with Abhijit, most people don’t earn money strictly from their books.

You can earn a good living from books, but for most people, there is some kind of a quote, unquote backend, right, whether it’s coaching or consulting or courses or whatever it is. And so for most of these authors, what they have discovered is that because it is so hard to sell books, you basically have to sell them something else and give them a book in order to move your book. And it’s a little depressing to think about it that way, but I think by and large, it actually is true. Naren was talking earlier about how a lot of people sell most of their books through speaking. I think that’s very true. And in fact, in order to get your book in the hands of people who may read it and like it, they will like it once they read it, but getting them to pay $30 for it is crazy.

It’s actually easier in many instances to convince them to pay $3,000 for something else, whether it is a workshop, whether it’s coaching, et cetera. So I think people are so busy and overloaded. The idea of, wow, what I pay $30 to give myself eight hours of homework or whatever it is. They kind of don’t want to do that. And so we have to be really creative because it is still, I believe, an incredibly valuable idea transmission packet. I want to write books, I want people to read my books, and it is an ongoing puzzle how to get them in the hands of willing people who will consume them.

Naren Aryal:

If I could just jump in, selling books is hard, right? Everyone listen to that. Selling books is hard. I tell authors that there’s more value in getting somebody to your website than getting them to buy a book. Right. And so why? You go to somebody’s website, you see what they do, what they talk about, how to book them for a keynote. That is, in the long run, more valuable than actually buying the book, but they’re going to get to your website how? They’ve heard of you, they’ve heard of your ideas, they’ve heard of your book, they’ve seen you promote your book, they’ve seen somebody else comment about what a great book this is. Get them to your website.

Dorie Clark:

Great advice.

Stuart Crainer:

I think Dorie understands the first rule of promoting your own book is that when you appear on webinars, you should always have copies of your book handy.

Dorie Clark:

That’s right. That’s right.

Stuart Crainer:

It’s amazing how many people don’t do that or don’t have them behind them. How will you approach your next book differently then, Dorie? Given you have all the learning from your previous books, what have you learned and how are you going to put it into practice next time?

Dorie Clark:

Yeah, it’s a great question. So I believe that at least some of you know about my next book that I’m doing. It has not been officially announced yet, so I don’t want to jump the gun on it. We’re going to be announcing it very shortly publicly. But what I will say is that it is for the B2C market, so I’m not anticipating a huge amount of corporate speaking around it. And as a result of that, we’re going to have to have a different strategy. I think that one of the key goals also is we are really, and I say we, because I’m writing with some co-authors, we are aiming to have this be very much an evergreen book. We hope that it will be a perennial resource for people that hopefully, like what color is your parachute or something like that. We’re hoping that this’ll be something that generations of people who find it relevant will be like, “Oh, well, yeah, obviously that’s what you get if you want to learn about this.”

And so it does change things in an interesting way because instead of a big two-week-long promotional blitz where, “Oh, buy the book.” I mean, we’ll do that to a certain extent, of course, because you have to build momentum, but we are very much thinking of this as an ultimate long game play. We want it to do well over years. We want it to do well over decades if we can. So we are going to be stretching it out and banging the drum for a long time on this.

Stuart Crainer:

Has it been different working with co-authors?

Dorie Clark:

It’s definitely different working with co-authors. I mean, I think one of the things you always have is in some ways it’s easier because you can… I’ll do chapter one, you do chapter two, you divide it up, and then it ends up being harder because you have to integrate those things. So every modality has its pluses and minuses, but certainly you’re able to surface more experiences, more stories, more anecdotes, more good ideas and perspectives early on that you wouldn’t have. So I think that that’s valuable. But yeah, I think the biggest thing, and Naren was alluding to this earlier about co-authors, is just the question of how do you unify the voice? And so we’re working on that now and trying to make it smooth and tight and a good unified reading experience for people. I think that we have mostly gotten there. So I think it’s going to be a win ultimately, but yeah, definitely a different experience.

Mikko Leskelä:

I guess that to learn more about your project, people should just subscribe to your newsletter.

Dorie Clark:

Thank you.

Mikko Leskelä:

Yeah, I thought I’d need to say that because that is something that I… Yeah, I’m looking forward to you-

Dorie Clark:

I appreciate the layup there.

Mikko Leskelä:

Yeah.

Dorie Clark:

If people are interested, it’s Dorieclark.com/subscribe.

Naren Aryal:

Hey, Mikko, you haven’t subscribed already?

Stuart Crainer:

It’s only a matter of time. Tamsen Webster makes an important point. We’re running out of time, but what kind of additional pressure does that kind of long game put on the idea itself? Which I think we’ve talked about, you play the long game with these ideas and you keep promoting them for, in your case, like five years, because they’re important ideas to you. But when the book appears, the silence, you get a bad reaction. So you’re putting a lot of eggs in one basket, I think is Tamsen’s to paraphrase.

Dorie Clark:

Yes, absolutely. To go meta on it, and thank you, Tamsen, for the question, one of the elements that I talk about in The Long Game is the concept of winning even if you lose. And so in the book, I tell the story of a gentleman named Jonathan Brill, who some of you know, he’s a fellow author. And Jonathan told me a really interesting story about a time that he wanted to learn about a new industry. In this case, it was sort of the food industry. And he took on a volunteer assignment where he was taking a lead role organising the US expo at this international kind of… It was like the World’s Fair that used to be a really big deal back 50 years ago, 100 years ago. There’s still World’s Fairs and they just get a lot less play now, but he took on a leading role one year helping to organise this and he decided best case scenario, he’s going to meet a ton of people, he’s going to get lucrative contracts because he’ll have all this networking.

Worst case scenario, he wanted to learn about it anyway, and he realised that even if nothing else happened and he didn’t earn money, he was absolutely going to learn more about the industry. He was absolutely going to meet lots of people. And for him, that was enough. And so if you can realise, all right, worst case scenario, as long as I’m meeting my baseline goals, anything else is gravy, to continue the food metaphor. In Jonathan’s case, it worked out really well, and he did end up doing a lot of business in that industry.

But so for me, I think that it’s about setting out, all right, however many copies you sell or whatever it is, I mean, clearly we want to sell tons of copies, but it is about creating, positioning in a space. And as long as you are having an opportunity to speak more to the right kinds of people, and if you’re having an opportunity to consolidate your positioning in a certain area, then that is a valuable goal that I think will pay dividends no matter what. So win even if you lose.

Stuart Crainer:

Yeah, that’s a good way to finish off, Dorie. We’re out of time. Really appreciate Dorie’s insights into the business book world. And thank you for joining us, Dorie. Obviously check out Dorie’s work at our website, on LinkedIn, and elsewhere and The Long Game I thoroughly recommend as well as Dorie’s other books and look forward to the musical theater extravaganza at some point as well, Dorie. Naren, thank you very much. You can check out the partnership between Amplify and Thinkers50. We’re looking forward to books being launched later in the year and really appreciate Naren’s insights on the realities of publishing and check out his book, The Thought Leadership Handbook. And Mikko, Mikko’s books are available in Finnish and available…

Mikko Leskelä:

Almost six million native speakers in that language.

Stuart Crainer:

Yeah. But they are sweeping the Finnish speaking world as we speak.

Mikko Leskelä:

They are.

Stuart Crainer:

Thank you everyone for joining us. If you’ve got further questions, please feel free to certainly ask Mikko and I on, and I’m sure Dorie and Naren on LinkedIn. We appreciate everyone being with us. And a final word from Mikko.

Mikko Leskelä:

Yeah, my final word is that let’s flash the QR code for the imprint with Amplify. And with these words, I just want to thank everybody. There’s been a lot of demand for this kind of talk and we need to continue on the topic. Thank you everybody for joining.