Why Every Founder and CEO Needs a Book
Being a capital-A Author carries weight and inherent professionalism—acceptance by your industry, by other authors, and by the reading public. As such, getting a book published is considered to be a high achievement.
How does this affect entrepreneurs, founders, CEOs, and venture capitalists? Becoming an author may not be as high on their to-do list as other goals or accomplishments, but that definitely doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be.
There is one powerful reason: Once you become an author, no matter your existing credentials, you are an established expert to journalists, investors, customers, and your audience. In this post, we’ll explore how publishing a book opens up countless opportunities.
Books Create Instant Credibility
The proliferation of fake news is one of the biggest issues that the US has faced in recent years. What started as a political issue and became a public health one has led to people scrambling to sort out the voices they should be trusting and listening to from those they should be avoiding. Looking at this issue from the side of the journalists trying to produce credible and trustworthy content (online, for the sake of this argument), seeking out and interviewing the correct experts who can provide knowledgeable insight on the topic they are covering is absolutely crucial—and many such journalists start this search in bookstores.
In an informal poll we conducted of journalists, many mentioned that they will start their search for experts to interview by looking up books that have been written on the topic and then reaching out to their authors. “Being able to include a book title in their bio line is an easy way to clearly establish their expertise,” explained Jennifer Joseph, a writer and editor with 15 years of experience with national publications. The biggest reason for this: No matter their profession or personal experience, readers know that it takes work to write a book and a lot of words to fill it. In their minds, someone who has put in the time and effort and has enough knowledge on a particular topic to fill hundreds of pages talking about it certainly must know a thing or two.
If your byline at events, appearances, and on articles includes “author of,” you’re immediately given expert credibility.
Books Make You and Your Work More Approachable
Taking part in interviews likely isn’t the only thing you’re doing to get your name out there and grow your business. Especially if you are trying to establish yourself as a thought leader in your field, networking events and conferences likely clutter your calendar. Even among people who are also knowledgeable and well-versed in your area of expertise, a book will make you stand out. If you decide to publish your book in print, you can distribute copies in the same way you would business cards. In fact, your book functions as a business card, resume, pitch, and interview all in one, condensing lots of time-consuming conversations (potentially with someone who has no interest in you or what you do) into one brief yet impressive exchange. If someone you meet has even a passing interest, they have enough in those pages to stoke their curiosity even further. Even if they don’t seem interested in the moment, they’ll appreciate the gift and likely return home, empty their bags, and give your book a quick perusal at worst and a very close read at best—and either of these interactions may be enough to spur their interest in you and your business.
People interpret the fact that you’ve written a book at all (before they have even read it) as an invitation into your mind and your world. It tells them that you have knowledge and experience that meant so much to you to share,that you put in the time and effort to put it into a book so that you could make it available to as many people as wanted access to it. Not to mention, even authors writing for a niche audience want to collect as many readers as possible, so books by nature are more intellectually approachable than other formats. They are broken down into chapters so readers who might be intimidated by a 40-page white paper don’t feel pressured to consume too much at once. And physically, people know what they are getting with a book—they likely won’t be tripped up by graphs, tables or statistics that aren’t accompanied by a digestible explanation for the average reader.
If people are forced or asked to read something that they feel is over their head, it can be discouraging and may even deter them from learning more about something they thought they were interested in. A book is much more likely to be easier to digest, especially if you work with experienced editors who know how to make this the case, stoking the interest of your readers instead of squashing it—and maybe even turning them into customers.
Books Expand Your Reach
If you have a successful business in 2022, you likely know a thing or two about the importance of hyperlinks. Hyperlinks give customers immediate access from the location they have chosen to be in—say, an article from a reputable digital publication or the home page of your company’s website—to more information, sales pages, and the like. After all, if you are trying to sell something, you want to make it as easy as you possibly can for customers to buy that thing. When you write a book, you are essentially starting with one place customers can buy it: Bookstores, whether brick-and-mortar and/or online. If you self-publish your book, you are likely selling it through your website as well, so that makes two places. To purchase your book, a customer has to make the decision to go to visit one of those sites in the first place, whether with your book in mind or not. But every time you are interviewed as an expert in an article and your book title is included in your bio, you have the opportunity to place that all-important hyperlink in a different location on the internet, which drastically expands the pool of potential buyers that have direct access to your book.
More specifically, it puts your book in front of a critically important group of people: The potential readers who are already in your industry or have an existing interest in your subject matter but don’t know that your book exists. These are the people, in the pre-internet days, who would go to the bookstore and browse through the nonfiction or business section just to see what new titles might pique their interest. These days, it’s tough to rely on browsers to make up a significant portion of your customer base, which is where hyperlinks come in. Getting your name and your book in front of potential readers by way of appearing as an expert in articles can help make up some of the difference.
If you’re ready to pursue these opportunities by writing and publishing a book
