Write a Book to Build a Business and Brand the Right Way: The Potential Benefits

Posted on by Carol Abrahamson

No surprise here. There’s a right way and a wrong way to write a book to build a business. Ask any of the tens of thousands of executive authors who complain about getting only meager results — if any business growth at all — from their book.

The right way — this only applies if you’re serious about getting book-driven business and growth results — is to have a business and growth expert on your book team. It’s not hard to see why that matters. Their expertise is essential when you start your book by defining its desired impact on your business in realistic terms. And it matters even more when your book is underway and your business needs to be aligned with your book and your book-related goals. Plus when your business needs to be made capable of leveraging your book and of enabling its maximum growth impact. Make sense? Sort of like successful children’s books requiring someone who’s familiar with kids on the creation team.

Done right, the kinds of business and growth results a book can generate — and the types of books executives create to achieve those results — are virtually limitless. These examples reflect only a partial list. Let them inspire and excite you about your future book’s possibilities.

Enhance your business

• Establish your expertise and market appeal through a book about the hottest new trends in your field.

• Differentiate your company’s offerings through an insightful book about your revolutionary approach to clients’ issues that can benefit companies everywhere.

• Build your personal and company’s brand through a forward-looking book about a disruptive emerging trend.

• Enter a new segment of the market through a book of thought-provoking stories to inspire your new target customers.

• Expand into a new market through a book of tips for success and mistakes to avoid.

• Open a new marketing channel through a book that demystifies something that’s starting to influence your industry.

• Broaden your international reach through a book of little-known but powerful solutions to problems that are cropping up in other countries.

• Attract worldwide recognition and new partners through a visionary book about an emerging issue that will likely have significant international impact in the next decade.

New relationships

• Attract more prospects and clients through a book describing your results-driven approach and the client problems it has solved.

• Gain new investors, donors and fans through a compilation of stories and profiles about the people your organization serves.

• Build a strong community of repeat buyers through a small illustrated book about how your best-selling product line came to be and is produced.

Exciting invitations

• Attract top-tier podcast, radio and TV interviews through a book about avoiding common mistakes your target customers make.

• Be offered impressive speaking and teaching opportunities through a book about exciting new products, applications and features in your industry.

• Receive blue-ribbon industry committee and corporate board invitations through a business memoir about the toughest decisions of your career.

Change your life

• Enhance your reputation through a history of your industry’s major products and players, interpreted through the concepts that have driven your business or through the lens of current issues.

• Achieve worldwide fame through a book proposing a new approach to common problems.

• Attract a buy-out or merger offer through a book about the shrewd — but ethical — reasoning and strategies that have led to your success.

• Pave the way for a career change through a book about concepts and management techniques you’ve used in your corporate life that will be the core of your new entrepreneurial venture.

• Start a part-time consulting practice through a book of surprising case studies about how nameplate companies have dealt with a vexing issue.

Books designed to build a business can lead to many important things

• Dispel a myth.
• Diffuse a crisis.
• Shape opinions.
• Start a dialogue.
• Build a reputation.
• Influence behavior.
• Achieve industry leader status.
• Find new partners or collaborators.
• Create new positioning for your business.
• Become a nationally syndicated columnist.
• Leave a legacy of your ideals and principles.
• Attract larger clients, projects or purchases.
• Teach or sell your ideas on PBS fund-raisers.
• Receive partnering or endorsement invitations.
• Buy a competitor or complementary organization.
• Explain something complicated or misunderstood.
• Establish the foundation of a new family of products.
• Be invited to give a prestigious commencement speech.
• Attract candidates to train and certify to teach your methods.
• Attract high-profile invitations from industry or government officials.