Hey friends,
So it’s a pretty exciting week…
Publishing a book has been a goal of mine since the very early days of my career.
It took 13 years, but next week The Business of Belonging will officially be published.
I thought today I could share my experience of publishing this book with you all, in case you or someone you know is thinking about publishing a book one day.
There are a lot of reasons why people who want to write books end up never getting to it. For me, it came down to making it a true commitment. On Jan 1 in 2020, I wrote down my three goals for the year and one of them was to get a book deal. After years of writing book drafts without any real plan or intention to get it to the finish line, I finally made it a priority.
Six months later I had a book deal signed, but not in the way I expected.
I thought I would go through the regular process of pitching agents, who would help me pitch publishers, and I would have to get a “yes” from their editorial board. That never happened.
I pitched a lot of publishers and a few agents. They all said no. Over six months, there were multiple times I almost gave up.
How I actually ended up getting the book deal was with a healthy dose of luck. I had pitched the First Round Review on publishing an article on community strategy and they said they were interested, but they wouldn’t be able to fit it in for a few months.
Then Covid hit.
All of a sudden, an article about online community and virtual events became a top priority. Some silver lining of the pandemic, in my case! We worked quickly to get an article together and it was published two weeks later.
The article did really well. It was timely and tactical. And as luck would have it, an editor from Wiley read it and thought it would make a good book. He emailed me and asked if I’d be interested in turning the article into a full book. I played it cool, like I hadn’t just been told “no” by other publishers, and let him know that I happened to have a book proposal ready to go.
That editor ended up working with me to improve the proposal (he was a huge help) and pitched it to the editorial board himself. They said yes, and I had a book deal.
So my biggest advice if you want to publish a book is to make it a commitment you can stick to. Write it down. Put it up on your mirror. Come up with a plan. Just start taking the steps toward that goal. Keep putting yourself in a position to get lucky and eventually, you’ll get lucky.
The other reason a lot of people never end up publishing their book is because of the book industry itself. It’s an extremely confusing and opaque world that makes it really hard for first-time authors to break through.
When I decided to write my book, I started by talking to as many book experts as possible. I spoke to authors, to hybrid-publishers, to agents and traditional publishers, to friends who work in the industry…anyone with any insight into the world of publishing that could help me wrap my head around it.
I was lucky to find some incredible advisors who helped me navigate this world.
On Twitter this week, I shared a thread of the inside secrets I learned along the way about the world of publishing. I hope it helps more of you write the books you’ve always been dreaming of.
If you do want to write a book and have questions, let me know. I’d love to help you bring your book to the world, especially if you’re an underestimated / underrepresented author.
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Notes
I thought I’d start sharing a bit about what I’ve been thinking about and reading in the world of community-powered business in these newsletters. Let me know if you find this stuff interesting.
Sarvasv Kulpati, a student at UC Berkeley, took a swing at coming up with a formula for measuring community that I found interesting (h/t Evan Hamilton). I like that it focuses on depth, not just connections:
Is community-washing the new green-washing? We have to be careful to recognize when companies are using the term “community” because it sounds good for PR, not because they’re actually willing to make an investment in building community. We should ask for receipts.
At CMX we did a deep dive case study into the Atlassian’s community. The article’s been well received and I spoke with our content lead today about doing more case studies like this. Wondering what other companies we should do deep dives with. Ideas?
I interviewed two people for the Masters of Community podcast this week who come from the world of behavioral psychology and network science. Some key takeaways:
Dunbars number actually works by multiples of 3, working from your innermost circle (closes friends) outward. At every level, multiply by 3 and that’s the number of people you can hold in that circle.
Zoom is exhausting in part because we’re not used to looking at ourselves in the mirror the entire time we’re talking to someone. Turn your self-view off and life gets better (but some new research is showing that audio-only calls are still less draining than Zoom).
All communities are driven by gossip and cliques. And neither of those have to be a bad thing. Our ability to learn about other people in a communtiy without actually talking to them is part of what gave homo sapiens an evolutionary advantage over other human species.
The interviews are with Professor Marissa King (Author of Social Chemistry) and Jon Levy (Author of You’re Invited). They’ll both be up in the next two weeks. In the meantime, enjoy my conversation with Matthew Kobach about how to build up your social community on Twitter.
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If you haven’t already RSVP’d, I’d love to invite you to join us at The Business of Belonging virtual launch party! We’ll have talks, readings, panels, and giveaways. Maybe a spontaneous dance party… we’ll see.
The book officially comes out on Tuesday. The things that move the needle the most for authors at this point are preorders, and reviews from verified purchasers. If you haven’t already preordered a few copies for yourself and your team, it would be a huge huge help. Grab em here.
Appreciate you all.
I love hearing from you. Hit reply and let me know what’s happening in your community-building worlds.
- Spinks