The Book Your Business Actually Needs (and Why Most Experts Write the Wrong One)

When experts consider writing a book, they usually start with the question, “What do I want to write?”

That feels like the obvious question because it’s honest and authentic. But that question centers on what you want to say, not what the book is supposed to do, and those are not the same thing.

Once you start from what you want to write, critical decisions get locked in without you realizing it. 

• Who the book is for
• What problem it’s solving
• How it positions you
• Opportunities it creates afterward

Those downstream effects are all created by the upfront choice of the book you’re going to write.

The default

Most people default to a handful of book types. They write some version of a personal story, a collection of ideas they’ve accumulated over time, their existing content organized into chapters, or a topic that feels aligned with what’s trending right now. And to be clear, these aren’t unintelligent choices. They’re actually very reasonable.

This is why you keep seeing the same kinds of books over and over from people who are otherwise very thoughtful operators. They’re reinforced from a few sources, including the publishing industry, examples people see, and advice that’s optimized for selling books, not for using books as strategic assets.

Once the choice about the type of book you’ll write is made, everything downstream follows from that decision - audience, positioning, tone, and use cases. You don’t get to undo the misalignment between the book and your business objectives later.

The system

The reason these choices keep showing up isn’t personal. It’s structural. Looking back at books that didn’t really move a business, the pattern is consistent. The failure didn’t happen during the writing. It happened before the writing ever started.

The book was chosen without clarity about its role. Publishing has its own incentives. It optimizes for retail sales, speed, trends, and discoverability. That makes sense if the goal is to sell a lot of books. But most business leaders aren’t trying to just sell books. They’re trying to create leverage for their career or business. They want better inbound and better opportunities. They want people to show up already understanding what they do and why it matters.

Publishing systems don’t really care about the distinction between selling books and creating leverage. So people end up inheriting a set of incentives and assumptions that don’t actually serve their goals.

The shift

Once you see the misalignment between the publishing industry and experts’ goals, the frame changes. The book is not content, self-expression, or a milestone. It’s a tool, and it’s supposed to do work for you. If the book doesn’t have a clear job, it doesn’t really do anything. It might be thoughtful and well-written, but it doesn’t become an enduring asset.

What changes

When the book is chosen correctly, the effects are obvious. These include better inbound, more relevant speaking and media opportunities, aligned partnerships, and revenue that actually compounds.

The right book filters. It’s working before you ever show up to a meeting. Most people don’t realize how much time they’re spending compensating for a book that isn’t doing its job. And a book can only do the job it needs to if it’s designed around your business’s trajectory, not around everything you’ve ever learned or experienced.

The lock-in

It’s easy to underestimate how early the decision window closes for the role your book is meant to play for your business right now. This decision has to be made before you outline a single chapter. Most people rush past this part. They assume writing will clarify it and that a good book will naturally be useful. Writing does clarify thinking, but it doesn’t retroactively fix strategy. Once you start writing, you can still edit words, move chapters around, and even improve clarity. What you can’t easily change is what the book is for. 

By the time someone says, “This isn’t really doing what I hoped,” the positioning is already baked in. That’s why you’ll hear from many business authors, “The book is good. It just didn’t really do anything.” That outcome isn’t mysterious. It’s predictable.

The open question

There are real diagnostic questions here that need to be answered upfront. These include:

• How do you determine the book that actually aligns with where your business is headed? 
• What book creates leverage instead of noise? 
• And what book should be written now versus later?

Those questions don’t get answered by writing more.

What's Next

The mistake is starting execution before deciding on the book you should write, and then realizing too late that the choice was never fully clarified.

Ultimately, the true starting point is deciding which book should exist at all.

If you want to pressure-test whether the book you’re considering is actually the one your business needs right now, you can talk it through directly with an Author.Inc founder.

Schedule my call.

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