The WRITE Strategy

Many business owners, consultants, entrepreneurs, company CEOs and directors reach that moment when they ask themselves, “What’s next?” You’ve grown a company, learned a lot, have deep knowledge, practical experience and case studies, insight and foresight. AI doesn’t have access to all you know (and please don’t give it to AI). This is your IP and your unique asset. Whether you realise it or not, you have a book in you. You might be ready to get stuck in and start writing it now, but that’s the wrong way to start. To leverage your strongest/deepest asset you need to approach your business book like, well, a business. The payoff of a business book is not so much about sales (but these are great too), but instead about trust, value, reputation, opportunity, and influence.

We live in a world surrounded by a wide range of restrictions, both formal and informal, around what we can say and write, and there’s a war going on around political correctness and wokeness. The consequences of ‘getting it wrong’ when you are writing a book can be significant, so it’s no wonder people are concerned about what they want to write and what they can’t write.

Trust – what is it, why it’s so critical now and how you can build it through your book?

There’s a trust deficit in the world. We read and hear about it every day. From misinformation to disinformation to blatant lying and, for those of us living in Australia, now election porkies. The research is in. Audiences have declining levels of trust in what they consume for a range of reasons, some of which include global uncertainty and complexity supercharged by the second Trump Presidency, and deployment of AI without linked transparency about who and how the algorithms are developed and the ‘advance’ of deep fakes. How do any of us know what’s real and what’s not? Trust is a topic I’ve been exploring during the video course I am undertaking at the moment. Perhaps not so oddly, not being perfect on camera is a plus in an increasingly fabricated world. Being natural on video is pretty easy to ‘see’. It’s our very human imperfections that are the very things that build trust.

As the AI world moves through the hype phase to the ‘real use’ phase it’s a great time to think about what this means for writers and readers. As I’ve noted before ‘we humans’ have to own or reclaim our agency in relation to the writing of books and content. We need approach AI as providing (some) useful tools to aid us in our writing and book marketing, not to substitute us. And we need to take ownership of what we ask it and how we use it.

Hi. Such a simple, powerful word. Friendly, open, inviting a desire to connect and exchange. BUT. The challenge we’re all facing right now is that most of us are now really unsure about whether the Hello/Hi is coming from a human or a bot AND we’re so overloaded with information that we increasingly don’t trust the messages and information we’re receiving. Hi/Hello could be the message you click on that opens you up to a scam, fraud, identify theft or much worse. For us humans then, Hi/Hello has become a potential threat. AI has put a rocket under this….and it’s demoralising and dehumanising.

The 9 things to do to write and self publish a successful business book that’s a smart business investment.

The impact of AI on the content world is MASSIVE and it is impacting the world of business book writing, publishing and marketing. From Google using it in summaries, people ‘writing and marketing’ book using ONLY AI (I am NOT a fan of this as the output is mostly rubbish), creating marketing and promotional content to making it easier and faster to repurpose content. If you have a business book you want to leverage to drive your visibility as a thought-leader, speaker, podcaster, business OR you are planning on writing a business book, you need to be across AI and how it can assist you . . . and what to watch out for.

As much as it pains me to write about scams in self publishing I must. I am regularly contacted by people seeking help because they have either been scammed or aren’t sure if the ‘offer’ they have been pitched is legit or not. As an Ambassador for the Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), a judge for the Australian Business Book Awards and a member of the Australian Society of Authors I take my role as an ethical leader in the self publishing space VERY seriously. The last thing genuine self publishing advisers, coaches, publishers and production companies need is unethical people and companies. That said, if you’re venturing into the world of self publishing how do you know what’s a scam and, MORE IMPORTANTLY, what to look out for with some of the large, global self publishing companies? Well, I’m going to share some insights with you so you don’t get ripped off.

There’s lots of excitement and fear and loathing around the impact that AI will have on those of us who write business books. It seems every day there’s another AI tool that will solve all our writing problems. The truth is while ChatGPT and other tools such as Perplexity, Gemini (previously Bard) and Poe can make lots of elements of writing faster and more efficient, good writing that delivers new insights and your perspective on challenges in your specific area, still need your personal touch.