I published books for other people for years before I wrote one of my own. Here is why I finally did.

Steve Kidd asked me, on his US radio show, about the book I had finally written. Lessons We Learnt From COVID 19. An anthology with ten authors from around the world. I told him it felt like the culmination of my life's work so far.

I also told him the thing I had been thinking about for years before I wrote it.

The weird thing about publishing other people's books

It is a strange position to sit in. You spend your days helping other people become authors. You edit their drafts. You shape their launch. You teach them how to promote their own words. And meanwhile, your own words sit in a folder somewhere, unwritten.

I did that for years. I thought I had a good reason. I have always preferred to make my friends famous rather than make myself famous. That instinct is still there. It is part of why my business works.

But there was a quieter reason too, and it is the one I am more interested in today.

The integrity problem

Here is what I said to Steve. I cannot sell a marketing strategy I have not used myself. I cannot sell a publishing service I have not been through myself. It made me uncomfortable that I was coaching authors through a process I had not personally completed.

Not "I had not made a bestseller". I had made plenty of bestsellers with clients. I mean the full experience. Sitting with your own first draft. Cutting your own favourite paragraph because your editor says it is not earning its place. Hitting "publish" on the Amazon page and seeing your name there instead of somebody else's. The small, private fear that comes after you press the button.

Until I had done that, I was always slightly outside the experience I was selling. After I did it, I was inside it. And the quality of my advice to clients changed because of it.

Why this book

Lessons We Learnt From COVID 19 is an anthology on purpose. Ten authors, all very different, all writing about how they survived and then thrived through the pandemic.

I could have written a solo book first. I had the material. I chose the anthology because it gave the book the thing my clients' books almost always lack, which is breadth of voice. A single author is one lens. Ten authors is ten lenses, ten industries, ten countries. The reader sees themselves in one of those lenses and then they trust the others.

I also said something to Steve that I believe more every year. There are only three guaranteed things in life. Taxes, death, and the next pandemic. The book is not a look back. It is a playbook for the next time the world tilts.

The small thing I did not expect

I expected the book to sharpen my client work. It did. What I did not expect was how much the book would sharpen my clients themselves.

When my clients see that I have been through the same process they are about to go through, the advice lands differently. They stop arguing about whether the edit is necessary. They stop pushing back on the launch plan. Because they can see, from the artefact on the shelf, that I have walked the same road and it worked.

If you are a service provider who coaches people through a thing you have not personally done, I am not here to shame you. I did that for years myself. I am here to say the day you finally do the thing you have been coaching on, two businesses change. Your client's business, because your advice gets sharper. And your own, because your clients stop negotiating with you.

Go do the thing.

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The full Steve Kidd radio interview is on the Global.Media YouTube channel. For the practical version on publishing as a route to authority, see Your book is published. Now what? An author's sales playbook. on Global.Media.