Multi Author vs Single Author Book

When people who have been approached to write a chapter for a book where several others also write a chapter for, come to me, they are often excited about the idea of having to ONLY write one chapter and then be able to call themselves a published author.

They are expecting to gain the same expert status as if they’d written the entire book themselves and they hope prospects will contact them, in response to reading that book.

In my experience, that rarely works, and here is why:

Firstly, you are given to write just one chapter on a topic that relates to the overall topic of the book and not your main topic of expertise.

For example, if you have been invited to write a chapter for a book called “Spirituality in the workplace”, and you are a management or leadership coach and hoping to show your expertise by contributing to such a book and ideally want readers of the book to contact you, you want to first be clear if that topic fits into what you offer. NOT what you know or what your expertise is, but what you offer.

People contact people they know can help them. So, will the overall topic of the multi author book allow you to write about your specific offer, and by that I mean, that you write about the solution you provide for clients?

For example, people who write their book with my help, that is a book where they are the sole author, they write the book from start to finish exclusively about their main topic of expertise and share their method in a way that the reader gets to know them and their expertise, and that makes it easy for the reader to choose to contact and want to work with you, without difficult ‘sales’ conversations or price objections.

Secondly, it is easy to feel valued just by being asked to contribute a chapter to a multi author book but will your name as the author be mentioned throughout the book so that the reader can easily identify who you are and what you offer or will your name only appear in certain parts of the book, a few times and chapters apart?

For example, when people have shown me a book they contributed a chapter to, they were disappointed with the printed copy when they discovered their name was listed on the book cover but not in the table of contents.

Next, their name was mentioned in the chapter they contributed but the chapter content was not about their solution, which does not connect the reader to your expertise.

Some of these multi author books also do not list the individual chapter author in the book index but only the chapter topics and the author profiles are listed as a separate chapter which makes it difficult for the reader to connect which author has what expertise and might be of value to contact for more detail or even to enquire to work with.

When clients write their book with my help, it is part of their writing to relate their expertise and experience throughout their book chapters.

Writing a full book (and not just contributing a chapter to a book of several authors) offers clients of mine the opportunity and space to fully engage the reader in stories or share in depths answers to questions you know your prospects have and that makes is easy for the reader to want to know more and contact you in response to having read your book.

Now, there’s a strategy and framework to writing a ‘good’ book and by that I mean a book that will give you the outcome you wish to achieve.

For example, you might like to build a list of prospects that have read your book or you may like to have prospects contact you in response to have read your book, whatever your outcome in mind is, the outcome is strategically written into your book, with my book writing and publishing a marketing ready book program.

And the other thing that attracts clients to get my help, is that they can easily write and publish a full book (approx. 140-160 pages) in just 6 weeks (some of my clients have finished their book in just 3 weeks!) because of the step by step framework I’ve taken them through.

So, if you want to learn about the strategy and framework, I regularly share it in right here in my posts or you can join my email list for free.

Simply contact me and ask how to get on the email list.

Or, if you are ready now and want to join my paid program to get my help, my 6-week start-to-finish proven framework from planning and writing your book, through to publishing and marketing it (including editing, layouts, and formatting). We leave nothing out!

Just contact me right here as per links below, for a chat, to see if this is right for you.