FAQ

Just like a fitness coach or life coach a book coach is there to share their expertise, provide guidance and feedback, encouragement and accountability throughout your book journey. There is a wide range of book coaches. Some just help you with the writing, others the production and publication. Here at The Book Adviser we coach you through the whole book journey from helping you structure your book, feedback on your writing, book design and layout, publication and, importantly, how to market and sell your book plus use it to increase your authority, visibility and recognition.

Yes. The right book coach can save you time and money, ensure that the content of your book is the best it can be and that it deliver value, knowledge and insights to your target audience. Jaqui Lane is an expert in writing and publishing business books. This is an unusual combination. She knows first hand (literally) what you need to do, the order in which you do it and the key experts to engage to deliver a book you are proud of.

Like most things in life it’s important to do your research as not all book coaches are the same. Many book coaches just help with the writing part of the self publishing journey, but there’s so much more to writing and publishing a successful business book. Of course, talking with someone who has used a book coach and understanding their experience is invaluable, so reach out to your network or look at genuine testimonials online. We’re happy to provide you with the details of some of our clients for you to speak with directly.

The best idea is to talk to a self publishing expert and seek their advice. To do this though you need to be able to have a clear idea of the purpose of your book, your target audience, their challenges and why your book is different to others in the marketplace. Jaqui has written 27 business books and worked with over 100 business people on their books. She provides, honest, direct and constructive feedback.

Here at The Book Adviser we offer a FREE 45 minute strategy session to help potential business book authors work through this. By the end of this session we’ll both be able to assess if your book idea is any good, and if you have the passion and commitment to write and publish it.

You don’t just ‘start writing’. To write a good business book you have to plan the content first. This means working out the purpose of your book, the key themes you want to focus on, the specific knowledge/ideas you want to share, your target audience and their challenges. This information informs the content outline of your book. Once you have the content structure of your book you can then start writing. And, to write effectively and efficiently you need to allocate two periods of 2-3 hours per week.

Self publishing is where you the author take control of all aspects of writing, publishing and marketing your book and invest your time and money in doing to. Of course becoming an instant expert on all matters book publishing and marketing can take time which is why many businesspeople look for a book coach who has done it all before and knows all aspects of the self publishing process.

Self publishing also means you are responsible for the marketing and sales of your book. This is an area that’s significantly underrated by first time business book authors, yet it’s the most powerful aspect of achieving your book publishing goals. The Book Adviser program devotes three of the eight steps to the marketing and sales aspect of your book and we have three book marketing packages to ensure you leverage your book to achieve the success you want.

Having written 27 business books Jaqui knows a thing or two about the time it takes to write a book. Mostly, the timeframe depends on the other commitments you have in your life, like running their business, family and holidays. This said, if you can allocate two slots of 2-3 hours a week, and you have a well thought-out content outline, most people can complete the first draft of a 30,000 word manuscript in 2-3 months.

After your first draft it will take another 1-2 months to revise your manuscript, get feedback and revise again and then have your final draft reviewed by a proofreader – an absolute must if you want to publish a high-quality book.

Most people write and publish their book in 9-12 months. We’ve worked with clients who have completed their book in as little as six months, some as long as 15 months. The production (publishing) component of your book usually takes 3-5 months AFTER you have a final manuscript.

Yes, we offer structural editing and proofreading services. Our clients do not require a structural edit of their manuscript as we have worked with them on developing the structure of their book when we develop the content outline based on our planning process. For those people who come to us with the draft of a manuscript we will assess it and either recommend a structural edit or not.

As we strive to create the highest quality business books possible in terms of their content and production we recommend all manuscripts are proofread prior to the production phase.

You own the copyright in your book and we help you to do this by registering you as the copyright owner through the and by placing a copyright notice on the Imprint page of your book.

There are a number of options for both eBooks and audio books. You can opt for a DIY approach or we’ll undertake the organisation, formatting, briefing and management of these for you. An important consideration for eBooks and audio books is the timing that you release them to the market and how they support your print book marketing and sales objectives.

And yes, you can start with an eBook first and then print versions.

It is important to create a clear Book Cover Design Brief for a designer, so that they understand the key themes/messages and target audience of the book. The brief should also include what, if any colour and design requirements that relate to your existing branding and marketing.

We have a range of book cover designers we recommend to our clients and work closely with you on brainstorming concepts and titles. We’re pretty good at coming up with book titles, so try us out.

The cost of printing your book depends on a number of factors the key ones being:
The page extent of your book – more pages, more cost
The quality of the paper stock you use
Whether it is a hard cover book or soft cover book
The printing process – black & white or 4-colour. The more colours the more cost
The quantity of books you print – the more you print the lower the unit cost
The format of your book – there are standard book sizes and these are more economical to print.

The total cost of self publishing your book will vary depending on what you can/want to do on your own, what assistance/support you need, the length of your book, how you publish it (print, eBook, audio book) and the marketing investment you want to make to achieve your book goals.

As a guide you should expect to invest between $10,000 - $30,000 over 12-18 months for a high-quality book if you print approx. 1,000 copies.

In terms of what you can expect to make in book sales, this is directly proportional to the effort and investment you put into the marketing of your book. This said, our clients typically sell 700-1,500 copies of their book over 12-18 months at an average price of $25.00

We are not a book Agent and therefore do not pitch books to traditional publishers. We do work with some hybrid publishers and some of our authors have had great success with their books via these publishers.

The quantity of books you sell will vary and depends on how much time and effort, and investment you are prepared to make in marketing and selling your book. There are a wide range of avenues to market and sell your book that are in your control (such as your website, presentations/speaking engagements, bulk sales, direct marketing to your database, partnership offers and more.

Our clients typically sell between 700-1,500 copies of their book over 12-18 months, with some selling as many as 3,000-5,000 copies.

We have developed three business book marketing packages to lead your book marketing strategy and sales.

You book positions you as an authority/expert in your field. You can use it to engage your industry organisations, relevant media, Podcasts and target content providers to increase your profile and visibility. Through these and active engagement on LinkedIn you can then engage with speakers’ agencies and conference organisers with your keynote presentation pitch based on your book.

You book positions you as an authority/expert in your field. You can use it to engage your industry organisations, relevant media, Podcasts, other Influencers in your area and target content providers to increase your profile and visibility.

All your activities around content marketing, your launch and industry engagement across different platforms work towards building awareness of you, your knowledge and ability to engage an audience. LinkedIn and your own website are critical elements of increasing your profile as you can leverage content from your book to engage with 100 and thousands of people.

Marketing and selling your book is a 12-18 month program that starts 3 months before your book launch and goes for a good 12-months after it. The key thing is to follow the content marketing plan and strategy we develop with you as part of our program.

An important part of selling your book is to work out what your primary goal for the book is. If you want to use it to grow your personal and/or business brand most of your activities should be around funnelling your target audience to your website to buy your book and then learn more about what you do and how you can help them. You also keep all the money from book sales and can build a larger database.

Not necessarily. It depends on the purpose, goals and objectives you have for your book. While Amazon is great for international sales (through its print on demand service) standing out from the millions of books on Amazon is hard and you don’t get to build your own database as it does not pass through details of who has bought your book) and you make way less money on each book sales as Amazon captures most of the RRP as their cut.

There are good reasons to upload your book to Amazon but it needs to be part of a well thought-out marketing strategy rather than your first and only distribution avenue.

We can if this is a core objective of yours, however, it’s super easy to ‘game’ the Amazon bestseller system so it’s relevance and recognition is declining rapidly. And, it’s unlikely to deliver you more sales or the level of recognition and relevance you are seeking with your target audience.

Content marketing is critical for getting visibility for your book. That said, you need to know your target audience, what platforms, influencers and media they are engaging with and focus your attention there.

We have developed three business book marketing packages and each one has content marketing as a core component of it. We develop a content marketing strategy with you, then a 6-12 month plan for the content (the type, platforms, themes and post topics) and can even write your content for you.

Of course, if you want to write your own content from your book with the strategy and plan we develop with you, you’ll be able to do this in a much more time and cost efficient way that’s more effective and integrated.

We are experts at marketing on LinkedIn as we’ve been active on this platform for over seven years and have worked with one of the leading LinkedIn sales and marketing experts, Linkfluncer. We continue to implement the Linkfluencer lead generation system combined with a focused content marketing strategy to grow our business and support our clients.

We’ve also worked closely with a LinkedIn content specialist, Lynnaire Johnston. In fact, Lynnaire went through The Book Adviser program to write, publish and market her book, Link.Ability.

The first step in your book journey is to book in a FREE 45 minute strategy session with Jaqui so that you can share your book concept, where you are at in your book journey. In this session we’ll cover the following topics.
Your key idea/themes/content subject matter
Your goals and purpose
Your target audience
Timeframe and other commitments
The Book Adviser Program overview