McGraw-Hill has just published Mark Schaefer’s book, Return On Influence: The Revolutionary Power of Klout, Social Scoring, and Influence Marketing. Mark wrote an excellent blog post about the process, titled “Getting your first book published: Lessons learned!” Here’s the lead.
“Do you dream of writing and publishing a book some day? It was always something I’ve wanted to do and I was so fortunate to have the opportunity to do it this year. Here are some lessons that you might find helpful from my journey with Return On Influence.”
There’s a lot of good advice there for you if you’re thinking about writing and publishing a book. I’ll highlight two of several important points.
As Mark notes, he was in the position where publishers approached him about doing a book. That may not have been planned but it was not accidental. Mark has a successful blog and a following. He writes well. He had self-published a book on a related topic, The Tao of Twitter, so McGraw-Hill knew he could get his head around a book-sized project.
That’s not either quick or easy, but it set Mark up to succeed. Becky Robinson likes to point out that the time to create a social media presence is not right after you publish your book, it’s way, way before that. Take Mark as a good example.
Take a lesson from Mark’s description of how he chose a topic. You’ll find he passes what I call my PEN test. He’s passionate about the subject. He was already an expert, but the book helped develop that expertise even more. And it looks like there are people who will want to buy the book.
There’s a lot more in Mark’s post about the writing process, editing, promotion, and whether he expects to make money from the book. Give it a read.
Hat tip: Thanks to Jane Perdue whose tweet pointed me to Mark’s post.