What Makes Us Unique
BusinessGhost thinks of itself as the thought leader in delivering the next generation of business books. But what exactly does that mean?
Let’s first take a look at the current types of business books.
You’ve got “captain of industry” books, in which CEOs tell their stories — what they accomplished, how they saved or transformed their companies or industries. These are fun to read, and ideally you can pick up a few concepts or tools that you can use in your own business. In reality, you could boil down most of these books to about a chapter — what the author did and how you could do the same thing can generally be summarized in 25 pages or less.
Then come biographies of business titans, such as Warren Buffett, John D. Rockefeller, or Steve Jobs. These are fun to read. It’s exhilarating to read about highly successful people. But I can read every biography about Tiger Woods ever written, and I still won’t be able to break ninety. Enjoyable reading? Definitely. Do they make me a better business person? Go read 500 pages on Warren Buffett and find out if you’re any wealthier as a result.
Then you’ve got guru books, in which experts, consultants, or others lay out tactics for handling one particular issue, such as marketing, sales, advertising or positioning, traditional networking, social networking, leadership, inspiring the troops, or the mindset of a leader. Again, the books might run 250 pages or more, but the core ideas could be summarized in a chapter.
Next come academic business books, which, like most academic writing, are deliberately obscure or even impenetrable. For me the classic example is Blue Ocean Strategy, a book from Harvard Business School that takes several hundred pages to say one thing: instead of competing with others, create something new. They give the example of Cirque de Soleil, which created a new marketplace for itself by inventing the concept of “circuses for adults.” You could summarize that entire book in a paragraph. In fact, we just did.
The overwhelming majority of business books fit into these categories. Their wisdom could be summarized in 25 pages or less–sometimes much less. But they’re often fluffed up with charts, graphs, and war stories until they’re bloated enough for publishers to charge $25 for them.
It’s like going to a restaurant for dinner. You need about eight ounces of fish or meat for your main course, maybe for your whole dinner. But they bring you a couple of pounds of food, so they can justify charging you $30 an entree.
Maybe book stores ought to put in a wine list to boost their sales!
The serious point: the typical business book is a bloated delivery system for the provision of a small number of ideas that could have been expressed simply and to the point…but then the publisher (and the author) couldn’t charge the reader twenty five dollars.
Amazing how business books actually waste the precious time of their time-starved readers.
So you can see that there might just be a place in the world for a different kind of business book.
Here’s what BusinessGhost books, which we like to call the next generation of business books, are all about:
1. They’re shorter and to the point. They’re usually about 150-175 pages. We don’t buy the idea that bigger is better.
2. The author isn’t trying to make money selling the book, so there’s no reason to crank up the size, put in a lot of Hamburger Helper, and justify the book’s price tag.
3. The author is avowedly using the book as a marketing tool to build his or her business. That’s the sole purpose of the book.
4. Your competitors have business cards; you’re an author and your “leave-behind” is an autographed copy of your book. Or your book is the entree to (lucrative) speaking engagements which cast you as the thought leader in your field. Or your book gets you on radio and TV, which makes an immediate impression on viewers and listeners and can be captured and placed on your website, impressing the heck out of anyone who visits your site. Or they can be Twittered to your followers. Or all of the above.
5. Every word of your book counts. Since we’re not worried about length for length’s sake, we focus on making the experience of reading the book extraordinarily useful for the reader. We lay out convincingly in the first chapter that you understand the reader’s pain better than anyone else. We make clear in the second chapter why you are the most trustworthy authority in your field. And then we lay out your action plan over the next six to ten chapters, allowing your readers information and ideas they can implement today…and get great results.
6. Our books aren’t just two or three ideas puffed up to book size. Instead, we weigh every word against this criterion: will the reader be more or less likely to pick up the phone, call the author of the book, and hire him or her or buy their product or service?
7. We accomplish Point 6 above by taking advantage of Emerson’s Law of Reciprocity, which states, very simply, that you get what you give. In other words, by being extremely generous with your information in the book, you will create an enormous reservoir of goodwill on the part of the reader, who will repay or compensate you by hiring you, buying what you offer, and referring you to others.
8. Our books contain dozens of what we like to call “HFS moments.” It’s when the reader’s eyes widen and he or she says, “Holy F*!@#ng S$#&!” (Or words to that effect.) These are moments when the reader is just so blown away by what you said that he or she can barely think straight. They’re not just informed, they’re EXCITED by what you know and what you have said in your book. Give a reader enough HFS moments and they’ll be on the phone to you in no time.
9. We often recommend that our clients give their book away for free, another act of great generosity that readers will feel compelled to repay. Our books come as traditional books, as downloads for the Kindle, iPad, and other devices, and also as PDF files, which visitors to your website can receive for free in exchange for their contact information. You don’t want the $2 or $3 you might make in royalties; you want their business. So let them know how much you know.
10. Our books aren’t research-oriented. We say, “If it’s not already in your head, it doesn’t need to be in your book.” People want to know how much you know that is specifically relevant to their needs. They want you to display leadership, so they can follow you. People are drowning in information today. They are counting on you to cut through the information overload and just tell them how to solve their problems.
11. Major publishers are targeting the broad business audience. BusinessGhost books are niche-oriented. We say, “Your niche makes you rich.” When you focus on your specific audience — instead of worrying about the New York Times best seller list — you can target every word of your book to the goal we set earlier — making you the only, clear, and compelling choice for the reader.
12. Our clients don’t have to play the “hope for an agent/pray for a book deal” game, which isn’t a fun game at all. By the time other people have written a book proposal, you’ve already got your book out there getting you business.
13. We recognize something counterintuitive about selling books through bookstores–that it’s really bad income. That’s because it’s very expensive to get a book into bookstores, and the odds of a person who is part of your targeted niche wandering into a bookstore, finding, and buying your book, are low. BusinessGhost books typically are sold via Amazon.com, via our clients’ websites, back of the room at their speaking engagements, or by other unique means. But we don’t waste our clients’ time and money on getting their books into an expensive and often unrewarding pipeline into bookstores. It’s just not worth it.
14. Our books are fun. We recognize that business is fun (when you’re winning!). Our chapter titles include (in a book on practice management for dentists) “What You Really Should Be Doing With Your Dental Hygienist”; (in a book on marketing, Hollywood style) “The Death of The Traditional Party, or Why Cirque de Soleil Performed at Jason’s Bar Mitzvah”. We don’t believe that business is dry and boring; who said books have to be anything other than informative, intriguing, and enjoyable?
15. Our books conclude with a unique kind of call to action — we describe in detail the specific kind of client the author is interested in, which allows readers to prequalify themselves before they call and take up our clients’ time and resources. The result: prospects who are convinced of your value, who appreciate your wisdom, and who recognize that they are going to be a good fit for you. In other words, they are selling themselves on becoming your clients, which makes sales radically easier for you.
Put these 15 points together, and you can see why we believe that BusinessGhost truly delivers the next generation of business book™.