How I published my book backwards
A mindset shift to bring books out to market faster.
Today’s post is brought to you by my annual member, Gunnar Habitz.
He published 27 books so far, the majority of them at major travel publishers in Germany, one fairy tale and three self-published business books in English. His Substack, Writing in Cafés, combines his passion for writing in cafés worldwide where he shares portions of his books, too.
As my next book, The Anti-Procrastinator will be released in January 2025 by Penguin Random House, I asked Gunnar to share his experience of working with publishers and controlling everything by himself.
That was shocking feedback in my early academic career. I liked my tutor job during my Master of Computer Science in Germany and enjoyed the collaboration of my Professor helping him with one of his published books about telecommunication topics. But his judgment about my attempts to contribute to his work hit me hard.
“You write too ‘bloomy’, too emotional. It should be more factual, maybe dry, not practical and not at all in a storytelling approach”, he said one day in his office.
I still remember the statement on his wall calendar of that day: “Ohne Druck kein Ruck” - while it doesn’t rhyme nicely in English, it means “without pressure no action.”
Luckily it was not my only job to earn a student’s life back then in the late 1990s. I also travelled occasionally from Hamburg to London, Prague and Venice to show students these cities as a tour guide. Just the available books were often factually wrong or just outdated. I sent a list of errors to one publisher about their book about the Czech Republic given all the changes back then.
I even offered to contribute travel articles to glossy magazines given my experience as tour guide. The typical answer I got from leading publication GEO Saison back then: “Why don’t you publish somewhere else beforehand so that we can watch you from the sidelines?”
Tapping Into the Publishing Industry.
Gratefully, an alternative German travel publisher in the style of the legendary Lonely Planet gave the green light to entrust me a 240-page book for the start.
Little did I know about the publishing industry, even as a regular weekly newspaper journalist who was drilled to deliver words on time.
After the first book was released, I published a second book with another publisher, and then the magic happened: the Chief Editor of GEO Saison came back and offered me to write a third of the title story about Prague with two fellow writers contributing Budapest and Vienna.
From there I have been fortunate enough to receive inbound requests to write for a regular Swiss travel magazine and a German newspaper in Prague.
What did I learn by tapping into this world of publishing (while working full-time as a Product Manager at a leading IT vendor?
Time: The best time to look for the next book deal is during the writing process, not afterwards to avoid a time without a new book in the pipeline.
Format: Writing travel books teaches to write in a format with a given length to ensure less editing work is required afterwards.
Estimation: Whenever I found another travel book series, I would calculate how long it would take for me to add to that series.
Branding: Writing books elevates a personal brand towards an authority and unlocks the more lucrative glossy articles (today I would say podcasts and events).
Typical question: would you translate your books into English? Well, not as the rights of the book and mainly of the series are with the publisher. I couldn’t even use portions of the books as articles.
So I had to come up with my own book ideas!
Discovering Self-Publishing too Early.
My wife Alexandra and I wrote the book “Hollywood in Prague” together covering all the movie locations from historic films such as “Amadeus” or the Oscar winner “Kolja” up to “Mission Impossible” and other blockbusters. But how to publish that book outside of an established series?
A local publisher in Prague gave me a shocking response in an interview: “Good that you already published some books so you know that you will not earn money before the second edition - and you carry the risk of photo copyright.”
This was before self-publishing on KDP was a thing so instead of that rejection I printed 150 books in a local copy shop - and I experienced a moment of freedom to write what I wanted for clients I would chase by myself!
When I moved from Zürich to Sydney eight years ago, coming out of a corporate layoff, I had a book title in my head: “Layoff to Payoff”. I even developed my own methodology on how I would help others in a similar situation. Not as a career coach, rather as a peer sitting in the waiting room of a doctor on the last session while meeting a fellow who was at the beginning of a similar disease.
It would have been a nice self-help book, it just would make me less employable as I would be perceived as writing against the industry. Another book that never saw the light of day.
Instead I contributed to a chapter book with other authors of a Melbourne based publisher, Samantha Jansen. And I learned the emotional aspect of a book launch - which I never had in the travel book industry. It was magic!
Finding Freedom With my First Business Book.
Working at the famous social media management software vendor Hootsuite for two years until 2022, I thought that I would compile the best part of my weekly blogging on LinkedIn in a book. Should be easy and straight forward with support from the company. No need for a publisher, all in my hands. I asked my favourite editor from my first compilation book contributions for her support and was about to begin.
And then it happened - again - this unwanted disruption of a layoff. With a bit of time at hand and a new role ahead, I started the reverse engineering approach which today I call writing the book backwards.
As I remember from my professor (“No pressure, no action”), I estimated the time it takes to write that book which soon became much more than just adding blog posts in book form.
Sitting in a regional city café called “Press Café” (as if journalists used to write there), I wrote the concept on a piece of paper and planned the time backwards. This was my approach on that very day, 22 September 2022:
Launch: 4 May 2023 (my birthday, helps to get more people)
Print: 50 paperbacks would take 2 weeks from a publisher friend
Editor: found 2 weeks in her agenda before and 2 weeks after the launch
Collaborators: 4 interview partners of 2 pages each, 12 experts with 1 page each
Concept: 4 chapters of 10 topics on double pages each (the former blog posts)
Speed: one hour per double page to estimate milestones
Cover: find a good designer on Airtasker
Finally I worked for six weeks straight with just one missed day - and all worked out! The 50 paperbacks of “Connect & Act” arrived the afternoon before the launch.
And the book launch was better than I ever thought - a book about online networking on LinkedIn saw 54 professionals enjoying offline networking in the room. Most of the interviewed experts attended and shared the stage. And then the big cake!
Without having any scientific approach or any coach experience, I believe that the applied manifestation of the book launch created the drive to go that extra journey with consistency.
Did it all work out eventually?
To be honest, the book didn’t sell more royalties than just shy of $1,000. But that was not what I have been after. The perceived authority from having a book was much higher than that of a course creator.
But why would I need to be known as a book author in a corporate role?
Two weeks after the book launch I also had two virtual launch events to cover global timezones. Even the Hootsuite Head of Corporate Communications kindly had a speaking part despite being laid off from them earlier!
What would that authority help me with? Just after those virtual launches my third layoff happened, unfortunately only eight months after starting at that company. What a shock in 2023 when more tech companies reduced their teams.
And all of a sudden life started to pay back for the book journey: one of the birthday launch participants gave me a consulting job for his team following the structure of my book about using LinkedIn. Another one asked me to talk about the book at his club to sell more units. Finally I gained 30X consulting $ compared to book sales!
How to write your book backwards.
Fast forward to 30 November 2024, already working for more than half a year in email marketing at ActiveCampaign, a real dream to work there and to learn how to use those skills for book marketing.
Writing coach Jane Turner invited me to speak at her legendary Author Showcase events at the NSW State Library in Sydney about my book writing journey including how to run digital marketing and sales.
I shared the approach of writing my future book “LinkedIn for Startups” backwards starting with the end in mind (and as usual with a draft cover “to see it happening”):
But what to give as a reward for listening to the participants? I collected a range of fictive stories and the extract of “Layoff to Payoff” in my own compilation book called „Lead Not Manage“, again in collaboration with my favourite editor, Karen Crombie.
This book acts like the portfolio of an artist to apply at an exhibition. And beyond selling on Amazon, my paid Substack members receive the whole book as well.
Lemons & Lemonade 🍋
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Here are additional resources to support your publishing journey:
📝 How to publish your ebook on Amazon in 30 days
🎬 Replay of the webinar with Penguin Random House
💡3 questions that got me 2 publishing deals
📚 An ebook: From Zero To Amazon Bestseller
Thank you so much for the invitation to share my story from major publishers to self-publishing with the manufesting power of book launches, Veronica!
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