The Path of Developing a Book into a Business Model. | AJ Jacobs & Rita Gunther McGrath | 439

Many professionals realize that a published book is a great business card – but is anyone actually reading it? Does your book have an impact? Today, we discuss the journey of publishing, marketing, and building a full business model from a book. To share their insights on that topic, we've invited two great guests that have the publishing process down pat. Rita Gunther McGrath is a highly regarded speaker, professor at Columbia Business School, and the author of multiple best-selling books such as Seeing Around Corners: How to Spot Inflection Points in Business Before They Happen. A.J. Jacobs is a journalist, TED Speaker, and seven-time author including the best-selling book Thanks a Thousand: A Gratitude Journey. Our conversation starts by discussing the business side of publishing. Our best-selling authors clarify the focus of their recent work, and discuss the various purposes that a published book can serve. While creating a "book-sized" calling card will put you ahead of some, your content still needs to be more than a glorified article if you want people to read it and take action based on your insights. Many first-time authors believe that once the book is written, the job of marketing will fall to the publisher. That's no longer the truth! Nowadays, publishers have stepped back from marketing - leaving the author to get the word out themselves. Rita shares how she plans the marketing of a book before any real writing even begins, while A.J. seeks innovative and creative ways to slice the topics of his books into as many sectors as possible, in order to earn a larger audience. The final leg of our conversation involves taking the information from the page and turning it into teachable content. Our guests share their strategies for turning thought leadership insights into lessons, creating systems and capabilities for instruction that can be brought into an organization in order to create measurable impact. Three Key Takeaways: * When writing a book, ensure your content is bigger than a simple article could contain. * Consider the method of publishing and marketing for your book before you start writing. * Publishers no longer promote books. As the author, you'll need to build a platform to reach the audience by yourself.