NEXT, THE
HOW
How did you become a speaker? You
learned platform skills. You refined your
message. You created a great website. But
above all, you eventually learned to “smell
like” a good public speaker by learning the
mechanics of the business.
Exactly the same thing is true in
landing a book contract. Of course, you
need good writing skills (or a good ghost-writer) and a great message. But beyond
that, you must learn to “smell like” a published author.
The first and most important skill for
doing this is to study the genre you are
writing in. Stop reading books, and start
deconstructing them, the same way a race
car designer tears down someone else’s
engine. What do the opening hooks of
other successful books sound like? How
are their chapters laid out? How long are
their paragraphs? How do they “stage”
the points they make? What kind of sentence structure do they use?
This is not the same as copying another
person’s style. Rather, it is understanding
how the best players play the game, as you
develop your own style. If successful business fables like Who Moved My Cheese
top out at 20,000 to 25,000 words, you
will not succeed writing one that is 40,000
words long. When other authors start
with a gripping narrative, you can’t get
away with a boring “this is what we will
discuss in this chapter.” The very best
books are thoughtfully composed performances that follow specific points of style.
Of course, styles differ between authors
and between types of books. Publishers
often have their own shorthand for these
genres—for example, they may talk about
a “seven steps” book, even if it actually
has five or 14 steps. Learn the landscape
of what sells in your field, and then start
