by Ruth Bullivant
What does a good book coach do for an author?
I hope there aren’t any bad book coaches! There aren’t many of us around yet and if you find one trained by Author Accelerator, they are going to be good.
Book Coaches Work with Writers While They Are Writing Their Book
There is a paradox in writing. The act of writing is an intensely solitary activity but what we write is shared with the minds of many. It’s a big risk to write a whole book, whether that’s a novel or non-fiction, without getting feedback as you go on how it is landing with another person.
Book coaches work with writers while they are writing their book. For a fiction writer that will mean getting down in the weeds with them while they are writing their first draft of their novel. For a non-fiction writer, it’s working on their idea for a book and guiding them through writing the book proposal that will go to agents and publishers before they have written the book itself.
Whatever the genre, the book coach works with the writer to help them produce the best version of their book. Unlike editing, it’s not primarily about the words on the page: it’s about helping the writer to find their real story. The coach guides the writer through a process that will get them to the finished draft. And if the writer wants to try publishing in the traditional way, she will help them through the pitching process or if they choose to self-publish, she can help them with that.
The Writer and the Book Coach Work One-to-One
The writer and the book coach work one-to-one. The writer is paying for guidance and feedback from a trained and experienced professional.
As writers, we might ask for feedback from our writing groups or our beta readers and they will certainly tell us what is wrong with our book. But they probably won’t be able to tell us why something is wrong with it. They won’t ask the questions, like a book coach can, to help you get to the root of the issue and bring your own solution.
Writing a book is hard and it gets really messy unless you understand the process. You can end up writing multiple drafts before “finding your line.” That’s exhausting.
It comes as a shock to new writers to learn that there is a process to writing a book but there certainly is. You need to be sure of what your point is, and you need to know how to be sure that your story holds together. There is a tool I use, invented by Jennie Nash of Author Accelerator, called the “Inside Outline,” which works like a mixture of magic and logic.
A book coach helps a writer to find what they want to say (it isn’t always obvious even to the writer) and she makes sure the writer stays on track, so they end up with a book they are proud of and that readers want to read.
Why I Decided to Become a Book Coach
It’s tempting to reduce the reasons why we make the big changes in our lives to the simplest causes. If you tried to describe the complex concatenation of circumstances and emotions that motivate transformation, won’t you lose your listener?
Oh! No, wait. Diving into the complex cause and effect, flaws, goals, wounds, and desires is what we do as story tellers, isn’t it? So, in no particular order:
- As a lawyer for three decades, I noticed that like me, colleagues and clients were fitting writing into the narrow margins of our working days.
- I have done a lot of coaching of professionals during my career and wanted to explore a new way of using that skill.
- I was feeling in need of a new challenge when I heard about Author Accelerator’s book coaching certification programme. To earn your certification with Author Accelerator, you must pass stringent assessments to show you know what you are doing.
Having started, I got hooked. I love building relationships with writers. It is a precious thing to be invited to enter a new world that somebody is building.
As a Book Coach, I Help My Clients Make the Most of Their Time
My clients are full-time professionals who want to share their knowledge in business non-fiction books or else they yearn to nurture their creative side with fiction. I am working with lawyers, academics, leaders in IT, bankers and entrepreneurs who are writing mystery and adventure, young adult fantasy or speculative fiction. Other clients are writing in their specialist field of knowledge as a capstone to their career. They are passing on their wisdom to the next generation.
A feature that unites them is that all my clients have little time to spend on their writing, so we make sure we make the best possible use of it. When a client approaches me to ask if we could work together, they write down as much as they can about their project in a Q&A form before we jump on a call. That gives us time to drill down to the root of what the writer needs.
At that stage, I look for the quality of the book idea: I make an informed judgement as to whether it has potential to work as a book. And I never, ever give a guarantee that a writer will obtain a publishing contract: that is completely outside the control of anyone but the publishing house.
3 Mistakes Writers Make When Setting Publishing Goals
When you are writing a book, it’s important to work out what your goal is because, without one you might find yourself not turning up to write after a while. Setting goals gives you direction and purpose when the going gets tough.
So, mistake #1 is not setting a clear goal from the start.
Find your goal by asking yourself: why are you writing your book? Not everyone’s goal is “publication.” One writer might want to write a significant memoir for their granddaughter and her children to come. Another might be writing, say, a hand-illustrated children’s book and plans to run off twenty copies at a commercial printer.
That leads me to mistake #2: It is a mistake to think publishing is the end goal of writing your book.
In the traditional publishing world, that way, madness lies. Some first-time writers dream of their manuscript being snapped up by one of the big publishers. One can dream but stay sane: be informed about your chances of success.
The traditional publishing industry is growing smaller and cannot afford to take big commercial risks. At the same time, the popularity of writing has increased. Agents are overwhelmed. In the UK, for example, an agent might be sent one thousand scripts in a month. 900 of those could be excellent and saleable, 100 of them might be ground-breaking, but the publishing market can’t absorb them all.
The ultimate test of whether your book is a good read is, did your reader think it was worth their while? Compare this. When an agent reads your submission, they are thinking, can I see a way to sell this to my publishing contact?
If they can’t see a sales opportunity—you see, we are not just talking about the inherent quality of the story and the writing—they will not accept your submission.
As a book coach, I offer a Plan to Publish service.
The writer and I go deep into their primary goals and then I help them navigate the choices they need to make to form a plan, with fallbacks and allowing for their available time. We look at how money flows under the different publishing models. If a writer wants to self-publish, I advise on the nitty gritty detail of creating the e-book and getting it out in the world.
There are different writing and publishing routes for fiction writers and non-fiction writers, and it is crucial to understand the difference, and what decisions need to be made along the routes.
The earlier you find out what the lie of the land of the industry is, what the exact steps to publication are via traditional and self-publishing, the higher the chance your will find long-term satisfaction in your writing.
Mistake #3 is to write the book and only then work out what genre it is and where it fits in the market.
This is a bad mistake in non-fiction because those books are sold to publishers on the basis of a book proposal, which is like a business case for writing the book. Once you secure the contract, you write the book.
For fiction, it pays to do a little research on your comparable titles before you start planning and writing the book. Or if you haven’t done that yet, do it now. Where will your book sit on the bookshelf in the bookstore? (Remember local bookstores?) Agents and publishers need to be convinced there is a market for your book. What makes your special by comparison to the “comp titles?” What makes it exciting and intriguing? Even if you intend to self-publish, do this work so you know how to position your book when you come to market it.
This is not “writing to market”—that is a mug’s game, because the fashion will change by the time you get your book to market—but it is intelligently articulating your book’s place in the market.
If you are serious about publishing your writing, you need to bring your business head to it.
But in the end, there are no guarantees in traditional publishing. You could have a perfectly constructed Proposal or perfectly positioned manuscript but if the agent or publisher does not have space in their portfolio at the precise moment you submit, they will reject it.
In My Experience as a Book Coach, Here’s the Biggest Stumbling Block Authors Have
The biggest stumbling block: Keeping on track with the story so that you keep the reader engaged from start to finish.
It is so easy to be swept along by enthusiasm for a brilliant new idea in the plot that you chase and nail down, without realizing that you have gone completely off track and that someone reading your story from scratch will be bored or frustrated by. It’s all in the planning and understanding how important it is to articulate the essential theme, or point, of your story.
This applies to non-fiction just as much as fiction. In fiction, the reader is standing in the shoes of the main character. In non-fiction, the reader is the hero being taken on a journey of transformation.
I’ve already mentioned I use a tried and trusted method that helps the writer stay on track while they are writing so that the flow and logic of the narrative is smooth and gripping.
After getting the story right so that the reader is entranced, the thing that stops writers from creating a publishable story is a failure to learn the skill of and invest time in self-editing.
A manuscript must be “polished” whether you submit it to an agent or upload it to an e-book platform. Most writers I know also pay for a professional to edit their manuscript too.
It is an illusion to think that a publishing house will bend over backwards to work with you on re-writing your ungrammatical, badly punctuated manuscript. Why would they waste precious resources doing this when they could take another, more well-presented manuscript? They are spoilt for choice.
The Biggest Benefits of Hiring a Book Coach
Most of us lead incredibly busy lives. Holding down our jobs, running a business, keeping the family show on the road—never mind leaving time for yourself and nurturing your creative talent.
It’s hard to feel justified in investing money in book coaching—you worry there are multiple other priorities fighting for your wallet’s attention. You compromise and say, I’ll join my local writing group. Writing groups can tell you what they like or don’t like, that a story does not work but they are not trained to be able to tell you why it doesn’t work.
You say, I’ll pay $400 to go to that virtual conference. I’ll buy all the books. But you won’t be working one to one with someone who makes it their business to help you succeed.
As well as understanding how to ask you the right questions that will guide you to write a satisfying book, a book coach is trained to give feedback in the most honest but supportive way.
Book coaches trained by Author Accelerator know how to pinpoint the underlying reasons for problems in a story—the chapter that lost all your beta readers, the character who won’t “behave,” the tricky opening or closing chapters. That feedback is given 1:1; it’s not generic.
When you find a coach you want to work with, you have their undivided attention. A book coach brings their training and experience and their knowledge of the industry and story craft to help you write what you really want.
If who want to write a book to promote your business or your expertise, you’ll know the benefits of publishing a book to sell or give away to prospective clients. It raises your profile and your voice. Getting your book out in the world clears the way to make a bigger investment in your business. The longer you leave it before publishing it, the more chances you will miss to extend your reach.
A good book coach is also a project manager.
Writing a book is a project, getting it to publication is another. She helps you get the deep story right (“what do I want to say through this book?”), sets a clear path for you to achieve your goals despite all the pressures on your creative time and keeps you on track when life gets in the way or your energy wanes.
She is your cheerleader and gives you wise counsel when decisions have to be made.
How You Can Tell You Have the Right Book Coach
The relationship must be completely honest, or you will waste your money.
A good book coach may start every session with a question, “How is this coaching working for you?”
If you find yourself saying, “Fine, fine,” knowing you are fudging the truth but not wanting to hurt their feelings, it’s time to open up or look for another coach.
If you finish a call with your coach and don’t know if you were both talking about the same thing or are asking yourself what is supposed to happen next, that’s the time to gracefully but firmly bring the engagement to an end.
When you are looking for a coach, think about:
- Coaching style—do you need tough love? Feedback delivered in a brisk, no-nonsense style? Or do you prefer to be given thoughtful, gentle, feedback?
- Specialisms—coaches tend to specialize according to genre (Memoir? Steampunk?) or issue (problem getting from Worldbuilding to compelling narrative? Finding your story?).
Where Do You Find Book Coaches?
A Google search on “book coach” might lead you to a transport ticketing service. And “writing coach” is a different job.
Try #bookcoach in the search engines of the main social media platforms. Author Accelerator has an excellent service that matches writers to coaches. (Full disclosure—I am on the list.)
Bring some self-knowledge to your search: know your strengths and weaknesses. Do you need help with story structure? Grammar? Getting the book out there? Do you know your writing goals, or do you need information and help to form them?
The best way to find out if you will be compatible with a coach is to jump on a free call with them. Don’t be afraid to walk away if it’s not working for you.
The Best Rewards of Book Coaching
The benefits for me: Getting to know some beautiful souls and some wonderful books. Being there when the writer uncovers meaning and connections that reveal truth in their writing.
The book on its own is so often an exquisite thing of great beauty but when you know the effort the author has put into writing it, it becomes transcendent, a product of a combination of hard work, inspiration, joy and tears (sometimes mine, too) in the creative process.
Advice for Young Writers: Define Your Idea of Publishing Success
Define your idea of publishing success. (Did I mention I was a lawyer?)
Do you mean, getting published by a global publisher? Or the amount of money you earn through a publishing advance? Or the royalties you earn through sales of your self-published book? Is publishing success fame among strangers or the heartfelt delight of fans, friends and family?
So, one piece of advice? Write a good book that people want to buy and to read.
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Ruth Bullivant is a book coach who gives one-to-one guidance to busy professionals who want to write a book. She will help you set your goals for writing and publishing and dig deep into your story idea. She will also guide you through the process so you can write forward with confidence.
Ruth trained with Jennie Nash of Author Accelerator and has been a lawyer for a long time. (Banking law, since you ask. It’s exciting. No—really.) Before that, she was educated in Greek and Latin at Oxford University. Now she writes 21st century mysteries that draw on Greek legends.
She adores dogs and cats but lives with neither. Sometimes, a neighbouring Russian Blue serenades her. He is so aristocratic, she thinks he may be a White Russian in disguise.
For more information on Ruth and her work or to speak with her about book coaching, please see her website or follow her on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
Featured photo by Taryn Elliott from Pexels.