What Is a Business Book?
One of the most popular directions in modern literature is the business book. They get commissioned quite often, because they can hold an enormous — and completely varied — body of material.
Promoting yourself or your business. Systematizing all the skills and achievements you’ve built up. Drawing some kind of summary of your own work. A certain challenge — or the desire to convey, through a business lens, a worldview that worked and could help others.
All of this coexists perfectly comfortably within a single book. Yet for all the variety I’ve just listed, the word “business” in the title still points to the main goal: strengthening the capabilities and earnings of the book’s author, or their company.
Reactions.
“He knows his craft so well he even wrote a book about it.” A fairly common reaction, and one that lets you build authority and win more clients. And it works in a specific way.
Everyone wants to work with experienced professionals. At the same time, a certain share of people don’t react at all to “we’re the best” and the like. The reason is that nobody, in their own — often expensive — advertising, is going to talk about their own shortcomings. That would be extremely odd. To pay money just to have someone dump a load of bad stuff on you.
That’s exactly why, looking at the endless row of everyone who’s “the best of the best,” a person gets lost in that loud, monotonous parade of pomp and shuts down, tuning out what’s being pushed at them so insistently.
A world of its own.
A book, in this respect, gives off a completely different vibe. It’s a separate little world with nothing extraneous in it. And in the case of a business book, if competitors show up at all, it’s only in whatever light is advantageous to the author (the client).
That’s the whole point of writing this kind of literature: creating a promotional platform, sealed off from anyone who might get in the way of taking a new step in the world of making money and moving goods and services.
How to Write.
There are many approaches to how, exactly, to write a business book. Some start by talking about their achievements. The reasoning goes that a person without practice and authority can’t have an audience. And to the unasked question “why should I listen to you,” the author says: here, I have a history of work and conquests.
It seems logical, but when people come to me to have this kind of literature written, I suggest starting with something else — something more interesting.
As for the worry that people won’t read a book that doesn’t immediately show off the author’s high level, I answer with a simple counterargument.
An interesting book will get read even if it features amateurs. All over the world, even for presidential offices, people back populists who spout nonsense the entire campaign but do it with charisma, entertaining everyone else. And there — responsibility, and influence over the life of an entire country. If we’re talking about a book, the stakes are far lower, which means the first priority is to be interesting, not pompous.
Is there a difference?
And, in essence — how is this “I’m an absolutely incredible, best-in-the-world professional” in a book any different from the same thing in an ad on some website or on TV? The reader, hit with that same dose right at the start, will do the usual thing. On TV, he just switches to another channel. With a book… he simply sets it aside and never comes back to it.
The first pages are an anchor that will either hook the reader and pull him into the written world, or fail to do its job — costing you a potential client of the business the book is meant to promote.
So it has to be interesting, and it has to carry the feeling that this will be a wonderful journey into an interesting, professional world. Of course, you have to demonstrate your level. But you should begin not with a dull, pompous biography, but with some “tricks” only a pro could know.
Like this, or like that?
Using my own profession as an example, I might start with something like:
“You know, it’s a very curious state — writing two wildly different books at the same time. One deeply tender and pure, about the Bible; the other about the no-holds-barred life of a high-octane junkie.”
Or:
“If you think that every book credited to a famous writer was actually written by them, you’re badly mistaken. Some of them long ago not only wrote themselves out but drank themselves under, keeping nothing but a name that’s loud and carries authority in readers’ eyes. It works beautifully as a brand for selling books that other people have been writing for a long time now.”
There you go. There’s insider knowledge. There’s a demonstration of experience and professionalism. All of it sparks interest right at the start and draws in the reader, who dives into the book eager to find even more that’s interesting.
But if I start with something like: “I’ve been writing for many years. I’ve had lots of commissions. Great experience, and I’m generally a good guy. Order my services from me”? What comes of that? Losing the reader is all but guaranteed.
So if you’re writing a book, begin with what only a pro could know and what will be interesting to someone completely outside the field. A nonstandard take on certain things or events. Insider knowledge and secrets that might lie unnoticed on the surface, or be hidden deep from outside eyes. That’s what will be interesting, and that’s what will work beautifully to establish your authority in the reader’s eyes.
Who’s up next?
Of course, you shouldn’t throw out the full set of your strengths. On the contrary — all of it absolutely has to be presented, but spread evenly across the book, “stitched” into interesting material.
Not “we’ve been working for 20 years,” but “at the party for our twentieth year on the market, we had a very funny incident.” The reader gets the information, and he’ll remember it. Yes, he’ll move on to where things were fun and funny. But the number “20” will lodge in his head, and he won’t forget it.
You can go through everything that needs to be presented and everything you need to announce this way. And there’s absolutely no need to turn the whole book into pure entertainment in the process. Most of what you want to show can be serious in nature and give the reader value. But not all of it. Dilute it, and make the information easier to take in.
Let humor give a rest from something difficult. Let interesting information “shake things loose” ahead of something a bit dull, if it can’t be avoided. Balance it so that even someone who knows nothing about what you’re writing wants to stay in your text.
Advertising, advertising, advertising.
A business book is interesting advertising that has to succeed at promotion and at drawing in clients. Work with the fears of the person who might commission your service.
The fear of getting a poor-quality service with no way to get the money back. The fear of running into an amateur — or an outright fraud. The fear that, by the end of the work, the cost of services will turn out to be far higher than planned at the start.
Work with this in the book. Show your attitude toward these things. Share your experience resolving disputes. Reading your book, your potential client should be shedding fears and gaining, along the way, confidence that everything will be fine.
Style.
This is where there’s the most freedom. Of course, there are certain areas of business where respectability is a mandatory norm. Obviously, there can’t be much “range” there. Just as everyone present is in business suits with impeccable diction, the book has to “dress” accordingly, presenting everything as measured and businesslike as possible.
But that’s a very narrow niche. Mostly, even large, serious companies try to look lighter and more creative. They’re seeking contact with people, and so their representatives quite comfortably wear jeans and hoodies at official events and public appearances alike.
That’s exactly why a business book’s style can be absolutely anything. Aggressive, ironic — basically anything, depending on what’s being written right here and now. Cursing, broken grammar. All of it, in measured doses, will let you sharpen this or that moment — as long as the author himself fits the image the book presents.
Of course, you can present an image radically different from the usual one. A bit of shock content. But that’s risky, because people might not buy it. To some, it can look artificial, which later breeds distrust toward the whole book.
Trust.
And trust is what has to be the foundation of foundations for a business book. That’s the feeling that has to arise in your reader. He has to believe not just that you’re cool or professional. He has to believe that services and products can actually be ordered from you. Thanks to the book, you have to become closer and more relatable to him.
That’s why, whatever the style of the delivery, you have to create an atmosphere of frank, easy conversation. Where you simply go and talk about the inner workings, about your professional attitude toward the very thing you do.
How do you create that atmosphere? There are many options. But I’ll suggest the simplest one. Don’t lie. Talk about what you do well. Don’t promise what you definitely can’t deliver. Of course, that might look a bit idealistic. But why not? Over the long haul, the trust and loyalty of clients can give far more than a local, here-and-now “grab it and run.”
In my practice of writing books, more and more businesspeople are coming around to this. So it’s an entirely real story. And judging by the state of their affairs, a fairly successful one too. Give it a try.
— I write books on commission — from interview to finished manuscript. If you’d like to tell the story of your business in this format, order a business book, and we’ll talk through the idea and the terms of working together.
More articles on writing — on the blog. My own books — here.
