MASTERED_recording-1_2025-07-24_11-01-51: There's a lot of writing advice, but you need to listen to all the advice and select what works for you​
MASTERED_recording-1_2025-07-24_11-01-51: I am a qualified coach. I've got a coaching diploma and I use those skills to help people write books that support their business. I'm also a ghost writer as well. A ghost write nonfiction work. And I'm also an author ~as well, ~but that's a separate partner business. And there's also the publishing side as well, so I help people self-publish their books.
MASTERED_recording-1_2025-07-24_11-01-51-1: feels like that is very slowly starting to be. Broken down ~and like the more, ~I know so many people now who have self-published, ~like ~ what are your thoughts on that? ~Like when, ~when is it a good ~time ~idea to self-publish ~or ~I guess you ~obviously ~think ~you know ~it's a good thing because you help people to do it.
So it used to be sort of. Used to be like, you know, there was rumors about, you know, oh, if you had sort of 15,000 followers or something, you might be able to get a traditional publishing deal. And those numbers are like, they've gone up to a hundred thousand now. And it's not, I'm not saying that, ~you know, ~you need a hundred thousand followers to get a traditional publishing deal, ~but that's not true.~
For a traditional publisher to produce and edit and type set and get a cover for and distribute a book, ~it's a, ~it's a big investment for them. So they need to know that there's gonna be a return on that. They're not going to publish that book if they think there's only gonna be a hundred sales, because that doesn't make any business sense.
~The the margins are small. ~The margins are smaller for the amount of money that you'll make outta them. Royalties are typically, well, they're only a few pounds per book. They're not a huge amount of money. So they need to have those sales to generate that~ you know, ~return on their investment.
I was initially rejected by the agents ~that ~I submitted to because ~they. They get a lot of ~they get a lot of submissions and ~they just ~said it wasn't right for them, but I pursued it anyway. It was, the choice was I either put it, close my laptop and never look at it again, or I self-publish it. So decided to self-publish it and, it basically created a lot of opportunities for me, ~and ~I think that's the thing ~that with these books that ~business owners need to focus on is the opportunities that it creates, that the calling card that it can be used for, because it's one of the best ways I honestly feel of introducing yourself to a wider audience without you having to be physically present in the room.
MASTERED_recording-1_2025-07-24_11-01-51-1: Yeah, that makes total sense. I mean, I guess it's like a epic lead magnet, isn't it? I spoke to Alice Denim on the podcast about her book that she wrote, ~and she ~it's actually ~like one of the lo lowest cost.~
MASTERED_recording-1_2025-07-24_11-01-51-1: Now, one of the things that you mentioned when we talked about doing this episode was how. People, and I think people will be excited by this idea, could take a podcast almost and turn that a book. Tell me a little bit more sort of what you were thinking with that.
~But if you ~think of the themes that keep on coming up in your podcast and then try and find podcast recordings to support that and to take clips from that. ~And ~then you will ~then ~write about the themes and ~then ~use the recordings to back it up as ~like ~evidence of why that works or why that's important.
~So ~one of them being actually I could self-publish and it would totally do what I want it to do. ~I ~how you described, you know, open up other opportunities. I think the other one for me is ~like ~thinking that it has to be this completely new from scratch thing. Whereas actually repurposing ~sort of ~content that you've already got makes so much sense.
If you self-publish, you'll never get a traditional publishing deal. ~And ~I'd heard that myself and ~I thought that. I ~thought ~that ~it would damage, ~you know, ~my future career if I did self-publish. But I ~literally ~had run out of options. ~I tried, ~I tried to get an agent and self-publishing it actually, ~it led to more, it ~led to better things ~and. ~The alternative was that I never self-published ~that I ~carried on trying to get the traditional publishing deal and perhaps ~just ~gave up in the end. ~So, you know, ~you can always self-publish something, try it and see how it goes, and then in the future. Traditionally publish. And the reason that I teach the type of publishing that I do is that if ~say in the future, I don't know, ~in two years ~time, ~you suddenly explode and everyone wants a bit of Liz on their podcast and on their TV programs, and you've got this self-published book as well.
Well if I do this then I can never do that. ~And ~it's ~really ~good to hear examples where that isn't the case. ~Because I do think, I, like, ~I love your story because I am definitely ~like ~in a phase of life and business at the moment where ~it's, ~I really believe ~like ~you need to go out and you need to sort of make what you wanna happen happen, know, rather than waiting around for someone else to see.
MASTERED_recording-1_2025-07-24_11-01-51: ~Of course, I mean, I mean, ~they don't update me with their opportunities as they come through, but the main things that people will do with these books is having the title of author has still got quite a good reputation. ~So ~people. Feel that if you have ~author after your ~author, after your name, then you are someone who is an expert in your arena.
I'd really like to do X, Y, or z. With you. And if you've had the book say that it's printed really well, it looks, ~you know, ~not expensive, but it looks of a good quality, then they know that you are producing a good quality product with the rest of the work that you do. So you use it as kind of like an intro card, a calling card.
That way. So I think another mental block. I feel like this is me going through all my mental blocks of writing a book, but ~another one, ~another one for me in particular is that I have spent my ~sort of ~life telling myself that I'm not a very good writer. You know, that's not something that I'm sort of find that easy or that I'm very ~sort of ~gifted at.
The way that I work is that I will check people's work ~as well ~when they work ~in like ~one-to-one with me or their group work, and I will put in track changes. ~So ~I'll make gentle suggestions of how things could be improved as well. 'cause you're not. You are not paying me to tell me that you're great.
MASTERED_recording-1_2025-07-24_11-01-51-1: ~And ~I do think this is where AI is doing us a bit of a disservice ~because. Like ~there is something really powerful and ~something really ~beautiful in that process of, ~like you say, ~writing that first chapter and ~sort of ~acknowledging that it's really bad, and then being to look back at that chapter, you know, from the end of writing your book and realizing how much you've improved.~ I guess like ~say someone's, you know, mulling over an idea of a book. Just getting into the habit of writing regularly is gonna help them ~you know, is, you know, ~even if it was like blog posts or other ~sort of ~things for their business. ~I, ~I would imagine that ~getting, ~just getting into a ~sort of very ~regular writing routine is gonna help 'em when it comes to writing their book as well.
MASTERED_recording-1_2025-07-24_11-01-51: ~Yeah, absolutely. Certainly. It certainly makes it something that is more approachable. ~Writing a book is a very different style of writing to social media posts like a very different style. Social media posts is all about the scroll. Like you literally have your hook, your, I mean, you have hooks obviously with the beginnings of chapter of the books, but it's more, books are more about building a relationship, building an argument or a case or whatever it is that you're trying to. Push people towards or pull them towards. But social media posts are very much like punchy, one line sentences. I have quite a lot of clients who come to me with their, the first draft of their first chapter. Every sentence is its own paragraph, and that's normal because we've forgotten that paragraphs.
And I remember when I was a kid. ~Oh, okay. My, ~my nana worked at a little primary school in a mining village, and she was a head teacher there, ~and ~she was asked to put together a book, ~and it was ~called Themes and Poems of Worship, which were ~basically just like ~poems and things for other head teachers to use for the children.
MASTERED_recording-1_2025-07-24_11-01-51-1: ~Yeah. Yeah. ~That's amazing. That's so cool that you still have it on your shelf. I love that.
But it's literally, it's about thinking ~about. I always think ~about what you want the outcome to be before you start a book. ~So as a coach, ~as a coach, ~I always think about it is ~the goal is not, I will write a book. The goal is I will write a book that will, and it's the finishing off the ~VA ~will bit that tells you what the content of the book needs to be.
MASTERED_recording-1_2025-07-24_11-01-51-1: And have you had people actually. ~Sort of ~turn their course content into a book, or has it been more that the book leads to the course ~or like how, ~'cause it must be quite hard to write a book that's a decent length and not put everything in, do you know what I mean? Like leave people wanting more.
that's why I don't think ~like a book about coaching or that we're just gonna take coaching for the sake of it. But ~a book about coaching is gonna lower your amount of clients ~that you're gonna have because no one will ever want to work with you again because they've got the book on coaching. No, they wanna, ~as a reader, I wanna be able to say, you know, ~oh, ~actually, but I've got X, Y, and z.
so ~you always, ~with nonfiction books, I'd ~always, ~always advise that you start with the structure with your outline for your book. ~So. ~With fiction books, there's two camps where some, some of them say that you should plot, there's plotters and there's sters. So you like either plotting your book or you're flying by the seat of your pants with your book.
MASTERED_recording-1_2025-07-24_11-01-51: I generally advocate for writing it in order, but in no way do you have to write it in order. I think it's just the way that my brain works ~side short circuit, if you made me go three chapters ahead, but ~a lot of my clients and ~a lot of ~other authors ~and they ~will jump around. ~It depends on, I think ~it depends on mood, ~it depends on, you know, ~you might be really fired up about a particular chapter and you might wanna skip ahead to that one.
MASTERED_recording-1_2025-07-24_11-01-51: ~Yeah, I mean I think it's, ~most of the people ~that ~I work with, ~they ~have businesses so they have to fit writing around. The work that generates income for them. ~And so therefore the business, and ~sometimes, you know, they might have families as well, you know, business family has to come first. Writing has to fit in around that.
~So it is just a, ~I've found that ~with generally the type of person, ~the demographic of people ~that ~I work with generally, ~they ~work better in the morning. ~They're not of the sort of like earnest Hemingway writing at midnight with whiskey type, but that type does work as well. But you know, ~most of the people I work with are ~sort of like ~up at 5:00 AM either ~'cause they're like ~exercising or they're looking after family, or they're trying to get in a cheeky hours, work hour of work before everything kicks off for the day so they can fit in ~sort of ~early morning writing sprints.
MASTERED_recording-1_2025-07-24_11-01-51-1: Hmm. That makes so much sense. ~Also, ~I feel really ~like ~encouraged that you said ~that ~you do 25 minute sprints, ~because I think in my, again, ~one of the make mindset blocks that I have got is this idea that I would have to sit there and write for hours each day to, to. happen. And actually one that really helped me kind of get out of that way of thinking was I was really struggling to write blog posts.
It's accountability. After that.
So who they need support from at that point? Like obviously you talked about how ~like ~you read all ~of ~your clients' work and ~you ~give them advice. You, you act, I guess like as an editor. Would say that that is vital to self-publishing a book that you get an external person to like read it and edit it?
Because ~we don't, ~we don't necessarily always say what we think we're saying on a page. ~We also get very much, it's like almost like ~our brain reads what we think is on the page rather than what's actually on the page after we've read it several times. ~We kind of, you know, ~ the voice in your head when you read ~that kind of ~says what your brain thinks it should be rather than what's actually there.
Your book can be so you don't need to ~spend, maybe ~have three rounds of editing. You can possibly get away with two or even one. And also the case that if you have leveled up your book to a certain level and then the editor takes over, ~if it's at a higher level that you've handed it over at, then ~they can.
But ~what, ~can you give people some tips on what they need to think about for the ~sort of ~self-publishing process? ~Like ~you've mentioned a few, like the cover ~obviously, you know, ~do they need a barcode? Like what are the sort of things that they're gonna need to think about?
But if you don't have a lot of money and you wanna do it yourself or you just don't feel that that's the way you wanna spend your money, there is a lot of resources on the internet about how it will walk you through how to self-publish. The only thing with Amazon is there's lots of weird little quirks that it's got like it, it's quite.
Just random questions like barcode. ~Yeah. ~Like Amazon will give you a barcode, which is a thing of beauty. So thank you Amazon for doing that. ~So, but ~you just need to tick a little box ~on on. ~When you're uploading it to say that you need a barcode and then they'll give you one, ~but ~most of the information is out there.
It's perfectly possible ~as well ~for you to do a print run of a hundred or 200 books. And then ~you. ~Sell them through your website ~or something ~if you wanted to. ~It is like ~you can do whatever you want with those, and I find the possibility that print runs quite exciting in a very geeky way and what you can do with that.
So thank you ~so much ~for ~like helping, ~helping me and helping people ~to re ~realize ~that ~this is ~like a totally ~a viable and beneficial thing to do for your business. If people are listening to this and they're like, yes, great, I wanna work with Amy. ~Like, I wanna do this, but I need help. ~How can people find you?