I’ve just been talking to one of my authors, who never fails to energise and delight me when we speak – she is so full of passion and energy for her subject, and it’s been wonderful to watch her step up and out over the last year or so as the book’s taken shape. It’s currently being copy-edited and will publish soon.
This morning she was telling me about another high-profile connection she’d made through her research and the new project they were working on together, and I was congratulating her and pointing out how far she’d come, and how much further she could go.
‘It’s amazing,’ she said, ‘It’s like it’s an enormous ball, and all I did was give it a little push, and now….. wow!’
She’s being modest, of course: she’s phenomenally good at what she does. But it’s true that until she started pulling the book together, the ‘ball’ was all about potential and not much about movement. Writing her book, reaching out to key thinkers in the field as part of her research, starting to talk about her ideas within her own institution and now beyond it, becoming known as the expert, that was what got it moving. And the impact has gone WAY beyond the book, rippling out into promotion, funding and her own developing business. Those who first got excited about it in her own network have brought in those known to them who care about this subject too, and so on.
And it’s not even published yet.
This is, for me, one of the most exciting aspects of publishing business books. It’s about so much more than the book, but the book is the focal point. It channels all that passion and deep thinking and creativity, and it gives it a form and structure so that others can look at it – or even just the idea of it – and say, ‘I’m in.’