Publishing a book can seem like a tall task. It takes a lot of words and a lot of time to get it just right. When it’s finished, though, it can have a life and impact that endures for years, making all the work worth it.
If you have something powerful to say, a book is a memorable way to say it. Books have the capacity to build recognition for your organization or cause or to help you establish yourself as a subject matter expert. It gives you the opportunity to dig deep and tell a story in a way that readers won’t forget. It also provides you with a platform that you can build upon through speaking appearances, readings and other related activities, strengthening your brand – whether it’s a personal or organizational one. You will both expand your audience and deepen your relationship with them.
Fryed Egg Productions can help you explore whether a book is a suitable outlet for your story. Here are some key things to know about the process.
Identifying your creative partners
Even the most successful professional writers have access to critical creative partners who help make their work better. If you would like to write a book, you will need to consider what kind of support you would like – and who should provide it. This can take on a variety of forms. You may want to work with someone who can help on the front end to conceive the plan for the book and to develop a strategy for its direction and execution. Do you want to hire a writer to write some or all of the book? If you or your team plan to write it yourself, would you like to work with an editor throughout the process or wait until you have a first draft for review? How about the designers who will make sure the book looks great? Finding the right fit will go a long way toward your book meeting your expectations.
Finding your focus
For a book to be effective, it needs to have a clear purpose and a thematic through-line that helps keep the reader engaged. A danger when you write a book is to throw the kitchen sink in it, bringing all the shreds of wisdom or tangentially related material you can summon to its pages. That approach, however, often will lead to a meandering reading experience and will undermine the power of your strongest messages. Consider what you want your book to be about and what you want the reader to most retain from the experience of reading it. What, in the end, is your message. Filter everything through that.
Perfection takes time
However, no one writes a perfectly focused first draft. A great book is going to require a process that often is marked by fits and starts and wrong directions. Be prepared to attack the first draft, forever pushing onward rather than getting bogged down in making everything just right the first time through. Once you have a first draft, it will be time to revise, often with the help of a team. You will find the book will gradually take shape, becoming a sharper and stronger piece of work during the revision process as you see what doesn’t work and what’s missing, where you can expand and where you can delete. Throughout, you can work with an editor and enlist readers you trust to provide feedback and help you make the best work possible.
A final product, publication and promotion
Nearly as important as what’s between the covers is the cover itself and how it looks inside, since that will go a long way toward convincing would-be readers to give your book a try. You will want to work with a team to get everything about the book’s presentation just right – from an eye-catching title and striking cover image to jacket copy that compellingly describes the book and blurbs that endorse it. You also will want to weigh your publication options, including the prospect of self-publishing. Then, of course, you will want to promote the book and take advantage of it to sell yourself or your organization. That deserves a full-fledged integrated marketing campaign, aiming for both short-term and long-term results.
At Fryed Egg, we help organizations build brand identities that reflect who they are, developing strategic and memorable messaging tailored to their audiences and helping them execute that messaging to ensure that it resonates. If you want to see if Fryed Egg is the right agency for your marketing needs, contact us at (813) 478-0494 or [email protected] or visit www.FryedEgg.com.