The ‘NOW’ and ‘THEN’ business book

I often find myself working with new authors who are somewhat conflicted over the book they want to write.

They have a logical book to write, which I call the ‘NOW’ book. This tends to be one that they can leverage the most, it probably feels fairly logical, and it will be relatively easy to write. And they have their ‘THEN’ book. This is the one that isn’t that logical right now, it probably isn’t easy to draw a link to why you have written it and how to leverage it, and it will be more challenging to write.

So, how do you decide which book is the right one to write now? My advice is simple: we all have a ‘NOW’ book – that’s the one to start with. Write and publish the book that will be the most beneficial to your business right here, right now. From my experience, most authors who go down this path are extremely grateful once they’ve done it.

For example, my first book was about marketing. I was running a marketing company at the time, so the logical book 101 Ways to Market Your Business was written. At the time it wasn’t the book that excited me the most; in fact, a book on just about anything else was more appealing. I was worried about being pigeon-holed and stuck in the world of marketing for the rest of my life, but luckily that didn’t happen.

My 101 Ways to Market Your Business book was very successful. I knew a lot about the topic, I was passionate about it, and my book solved a lot of problems for the reader. It helped me to build my profile and to become very successful in my space, which in turn allowed me to go on and write about virtually anything I wanted to.

So the moral to the story is both easy and complicated. Write the logical book that needs to be written now, the one that you can use to leverage who you are and what you do, and then go and have a play with other books. While you might not be quite as passionate about the ‘NOW’ book as opposed to the ‘THEN’ book, the fact that you are more likely to make it successful will actually be the catalyst that makes the second book possible. Or in other words, beware of chasing shiny objects, a common entrepreneurial trait.