Not all Parts Fit

Why do not all parts always make a whole piece?

Sometimes people might say: Ooh, I can just buy a dial somewhere online and a capacitor, for example.

And I’ve got this cool watch band to go with it.

So now they come to the Jewellery Shop and say: Can you put my watch together?

This is from an industry that I worked in some years ago, the jewellery and watch industry.

My husband and I bought a Jewellery Shop with a Workshop and aside from actually making Gold & Silver Jewellery, we also repaired Clocks and Watches.

Some customers would come in and thought they’d save money when they bought pieces online and brought them to us, asking to have an item made or a watch or clock repaired, using the pieces they’d brought with them.

But that just doesn’t make sense because the customer doesn’t know: Is this the right dial to fit with this capacitor, with this watch case and is the band the size for this watch?

How are all those individual pieces going to make a whole?

Exactly this happens when people are thinking about or starting to write a book and do the writing, which in itself, is great, but usually they do not think about what they want the book to do.

They don’t think further, they just finish the writing and look for an editor, after that for a publisher and only when the book is finished and published, do they think:

Oh, now I need to market my book!

The problem with that approach is the same as we had in the Jewellery Industry, just because the client brings me all the pieces, it does not mean they fit together!

Making a book ‘marketable’ starts when writing it!

The person has to consider, at the very start, who they are writing for. Who will want to read the book? Where are they and how do they want to be made aware that the book exists?

And another very important question to think about at the start is, how is the book going to serve their clients?

Because it’s not about you.

Remember, you’re not writing the book for you.

You’re writing it for the reader.

So coming to me, as has happened over the past nearly 10 years, once the book has been written and published, I can’t guarantee that that book fits into the process of marketing it.

Here is an example:
The Financial Adviser had written and published her book and when she came to me to market it, her answer to my question: who is your book for?

She had no answer.

She wanted to let people know that her particular approach to building wealth was about life. She wanted to say, she does not just look at financial products, and how investments grow, but that the real reason to invest needs to be around what lifestyle people want.

The book is well written, and it has some great ‘stories’ as illustrations, but it was not considered how it would be marketed.
It was not considered who specifically it would be best for to read this book.

The title is far too broad to be appealing to a particular client group this Financial Adviser wants to attract. The stories she’s used are great but they cover a huge range of age groups and backgrounds of people that marketing it to so many different readers is almost impossible.

Here is the ‘hack’ she needed to know before she started:
Wanting to appeal to different types of clients in the same book, it is the book title that then needs to touch on a point all those different clients have in common, in this case it was different age groups of clients.

What I’m saying here, is, under 30 people would be looking for different Financial Advice to people over 50, for example. By expecting both those age groups to be interested in that book, a point of interest both those age groups would have, needs to be found, and that would need to be addressed with the title of the book.

When you are ready to write a book, instead of simply starting it without a clear plan, thinking it can all be ‘put together’ as you finish one part after the other, you are much better off instead of putting the pieces together yourself or getting them in bits and pieces, aiming to have them put together down the track, to come to me right away when the thought of writing comes to you.

Because my background is marketing, everything I do revolves around knowing from the start, how something can be marketed.
In my Write and Publish a Marketing Optimized Book in 6-Weeks or less Program, the first thing we look at is your client. Your very best client, because it makes sense you’d like more of those and attract them with the book, right?

If you have more questions on writing a book, join my FB Group, and ask your questions there, the link is below.