The Birth of a Book
Today, 1 September, I have seen the launch of a new book, ‘Business is Humans: A new working culture where people and their purpose are more important than the businesses they run’, in which I have contributed a chapter.
The book is the brainchild of designer Ben Drury, aka The Culture Gury, and James & Kelly West, founders of the ONLE network.
A group of networkers took it upon themselves last year each to write a section about a set business topics. These sections included: The value of a value; boundaries not balance; The advantage of not fitting in; Trust me, I’m a salesman; Accountabiltiy; The power of stepping into conflict; The work from home problem; and many more.
My section was called ‘Respond and deliver’. It’s some 1,000 words about accountability and results. I invoke the language of experts in business and humanity like Steven Covey, Brené Brown, Vince Lombardi, Jack Welch and my highly successful half brother Patrick Barbour who is an active man of 87.
We were all given a deadline – the idea was to have a book written in a day – and a deadline. And we all delivered. Ben explained at the online launch today that things got complicated after that. The book had to be typeset three times for a number of reasons, and, at first, Amazon would not accept the title.
This just shows that: It is possible to write a book quickly if you know your subject and you put your mind to it; and you are part of a group with shared businesses purposes, established through networking relationships.
We don’t know if this book will be bought and read, but we are on our way. Now we will seek reviews, and take it to local bookshops – Waterstones are known to be keen to promote local authors in their towns. And we are committed to try again when we have an idea to inspire us. Here’s the link to Amazon. The book costs £14.99, and the return from Amazon will be 64 pence for each copy sold.
Through a concerted buying campaign by authors and friends on 1 September during a half hour period, we managed to get the book to No4 in the Amazon Business Books best seller list.
Talking of ideas for books …
Where do they come from? In a non-fiction book club we have read and discussed ‘Big Magic’ by Elizabeth Gilbert, author of the best selling ‘Eat, pray, love’. The big idea to come out of ‘Big Magic’ for authors is to stay curious and follow your inspirations and gut feelings. They may not lead you where you think they are going but they give you the inspiration on another topic.
For help and inspiration in putting together and preparing your book for a literary agent, publisher and print, please contact me to get assistance in responding and delivering.