Author? Writer? Who’s the Expert?

Our author-clients are experts in their area of business endeavor. While they may be accomplished in other endeavors, whether a sports activity or a hobby, no one expects them to be an expert writer. That’s where we come in to help. We’re expert writers and editors with nearly 40 years of experience helping authors get their books written.

Author-clients don’t expect us to be experts in their subject area. Our secondary area of expertise is being able to quickly learn and understand a subject area. Since we concentrate only on business book development, we know and understand most aspects of business very well.  Roger and I learned this skill early in our publishing careers in the early 1970s. We were both sales reps for a major college textbook publisher, calling on a dozen or more professors every day to discuss their textbook needs. Our competitive advantage, taught to us by editors and authors alike, was learning enough about a subject area to discuss it intelligently with the professor, whether it was astronomy, marketing or calculus. We prepared for our daily calls by reading from the books we hoped to sell before we hit campus. We learned how to be good listeners when meeting with the professors, asking questions and demonstrating our interest. We were so good that once in a while a prof would ask, “So, you were a [math/sociology/oceanography/etc.] major in college?”

These are two, but only two, talents we bring to the table for our business book author/clients. In point of fact, if we’re not interested in the book’s subject, we’ll respectfully decline interest. No sense writing a book for you if we don’t have a passionate interest to match your own. My most recent project was writing a book for a security consultant explaining how business travelers are at risk of losing their precious business intelligence and intellectual property to thieves and competitors. This is trade secret theft, and it occurs every day in airports, on planes, in taxis, hotel rooms and corporate meeting rooms, primarily by gaining access to computers and smartphones. I devoured the subject, incessantly peppering the author and his intel buddies for information.

I’m a good learner, and took my author’s message to heart. I’m leaving for a trip to China this week, and am leaving my iPhone and MacBookPro at home. I look forward to telling you more about the book when it’s published later this year.