Why Your WHY Comes First When Writing Nonfiction

Boni:

There we are. We are live.

John:

Hi there everyone. Welcome. This is John Wagner-Stafford and Boni Wagner-Stafford, and we want to welcome to the live stream of Ingenium Books' live learning events series. We're just starting this out and hope that this is going to be helpful for you in your offering of your business books. And today the topic is why your "why" comes first. Bonnie is going to be answering as much - as many questions as I, as she can. I hopefully will be asking the questions and we hope that you get something out of this. The purpose here is so that we can share our experience with you and make your journey writing business books a lot easier, more fun and better overall,

Boni:

Just to add a couple of things there. I think I will actually talk about nonfiction a little bit more broadly than just business books, but business books are of course one of our specialties where we work with professional entrepreneurs to write books that help their business in one way, shape or form. But we certainly also talk about memoir and journalistic nonfiction and self help and all that kind of stuff. I also wanted to just mention John that the live series that we've just launched: you and I did a test a couple of weeks ago. Last week, we spoke with Yvonne Caputo, who is one of our authors, who's done a memoir. And our plan at the moment is to alternate weeks. We're going to speak with our authors one week, and then you and I will be here talking about a, something to do with craft. And I don't mean craft just from a writing perspective, but craft from the overall perspective on publishing. So who knows? Just like everything right now with the coronavirus and the pandemic, things can change. But at the moment that's our plan.

John:

Yeah, we're hot. We're hunkered down here in our home office in Mexico. And I just wanted to also add something: in us talking about publishing books, we also talk a lot about running a business and good business practices and personal practices about running a business and, and, you know, being good at what you do. So we hopefully will help out in other areas. So why don't we get down to it, Boni? The the purpose of this learning session, I guess, is to answer the question: why is the "why" so important to identify before you start getting to writing or publishing a book?

Boni:

Yeah, well, and this is ... We'd like to start at the beginning and for us we start with getting - before we even decide whether we're taking on an author client and, you know, we'd be happy to have a conversation - and we do have these conversations frequently with, with people who are either thinking about writing a book or have or are in the process - but the "why", provides the foundation for every other decision that you make through the process of writing the book writing, publishing, marketing the book. It really does affect so many things. And Yvonne is saying hi. Hi, Yvonne. Thanks for joining us. We were just talking about Yvonne being on last week. And so the, you know, there are lots of books about their - you know, Simon Sinek: "Start With Why". So the concept is really the same.

Boni:

It's interesting to me. And I think, you know, John, you, and I've been on a number of discovery calls with people who are inquiring about what the process would be for them to write a nonfiction book who may be surprised that we spend so much time before we've even talked about, you know, what their book is about, that we're asking them, what is their motivation for, for writing a book. So it's that foundational little bit of, of of information that helps not just the author, but helps everybody and every decision along the journey of that book from conception to published.

John:

Yeah. And one of the things, I guess, that, uh, comes to mind for me and we're going to talk about this in two weeks - but the, one of the core pieces of information is that when you identify your "why", you start to begin to identify, or you go along the path of identifying who your reader is. Can you talk a little bit about the importance of that?

Boni:

Yeah. And that is really critical. This also speaks to the the importance of understanding who your audience is, and, you know, anybody who spends any time in marketing or communications will know this, but for nonfiction in particular when you understand what your "why" is - and we keep saying "why", and really we're talking about goals and objectives. So in our book, "One Million Readers", we talk about setting your goals and objectives from a marketing perspective, because "One Million Readers" is about your marketing strategy for a nonfiction book - but it's just as important to set your goals and objectives and understand what they are before you even begin writing. And as you say, understanding what those goals and objectives are - your "why" for writing the book - really helps you identify that audience and it's in the identification of that audience that tells you what you're going to write, what kind of language you're going to use, what are the anecdotes that are going to resonate with your reader, what does your reader need from you and your book, um what do you want your reader to have from you and your book, what kind of cover design is going to appeal to your reader - it might be something different than personally appeals to you - and on and on and on. I mean, everything is, is linked to the reason that you're motivated to write the book, that is tied to the goals and objectives for writing that book. And it's all about the audience.

John:

And - oh, absolutely. And again, we'll be covering that in detail in a couple of weeks. So ...

Boni:

Yeah, in a couple of weeks, it's going to be all about how to drill deep into identifying your reader. So the, the, "why" and the objectives is about, you know, the, the broad strokes: understanding what your audience sort of in a writ large way is. And then in two weeks, how to identify your reader and drill down so that you can start to get to a picture of what's that word? Uh you know, the icon, there's a word. Anyway, I forget the word. Your avatar: your, your reader avatar. Yeah. So to those kinds of details. But this first step is not about all that detail. In two weeks, we'll talk about all that detail. This first step is why, what are your goals and objectives, and what is the audience that you're, you're trying to attract?

John:

Can you give us briefly, some examples that we've come across with some, some of our authors' goals and objectives? Some might be, you know, making money, running business, helping others. What are some of the, the differences or the different "whys" that are out there?

Boni:

Yeah. of course, and just before I do that, I was, I was thinking that I kind of alluded to this a little bit earlier, but there - we specialize in nonfiction. We work with nonfiction. And so we're talking specifically about nonfiction. In my experience - and my belief is that it's still important for authors of fiction to understand what their motivation is, but it doesn't have the same kind of all-consuming connection to everything else that happens. I think of it - somebody else might disagree and that's fine - I think of it as: somebody writing fiction is creating a story that is going to attract the audience. When you're writing nonfiction, you are actually crafting something specific for the audience and the audience influences the story you tell. When you, you know - so again, fiction: I'm creating a story that is going to resonate with a particular audience; nonfiction: that's the audience that I'm writing for, and now I'm crafting something specifically for that audience.

John:

Yeah.

Boni:

Some examples: so we were ... There's a, you know, the most basic example that isn't really about a book is - and we, we use this in - this example or a form of it in a "One Million Readers" as well, related to marketing - and let's just take a vacation. So you're planning to go on a vacation. And of course, you're going to think about in advance, you're going to think about, you know, what is the experience you want on your vacation? Are you looking for an adventure vacation and are you a thrill seeker, or do you need two weeks of total downtime on the beach with, you know, book after book after book? And the, what you, that that speaks to your "why": what is, what are you trying to get out of that vacation, which is going to influence the decision of the destination that you choose, how much money you're going to invest in getting there, the kinds of things that you do, or the activities that you book in advance. It's going to affect how you decide to get there.

Boni:

If you're a thrill seeker, you might want to hitchhike and, you know, take the train. If you, you know, if you really just need two weeks downtime on the beach, you're going to fly first class. So it's the same kind of thing. When you're thinking about the why and your goals and objectives for your nonfiction book, is it really helps you target what that path is that you're going to take.

John:

We're probably going to be repeating some of these notions over and over again, because it is, it's important to repeat things, but this question, I think, might lead to something you've already said, and I think it's good to underline this. What happens if you start writing your book before you identify your "why"? What's the problem with that?

Boni:

Well, I never want to say there's a problem with getting down and writing your book. However, what the implications are of that - and I think, you know, if somebody wants to write a book, they should be starting to write and how, you know, whatever it works. When you're thinking about a nonfiction book - and in particular, when it's a nonfiction book that is tied to an existing business, for example - um if you haven't thought through what your motivation is, what your goals are, what your objectives are, both for you as the author, for your business and for your reader audience, what is it that you want them to do, think and feel, you risk wasting your time. And you know, people nowadays hunkering down at home might have a little bit more time than they would otherwise, but we, you know, we never want to advocate having to do things over or you know, wasting your time at all. But so doing that fresh piece of work is really going to help make your process, your writing process more efficient. So it's not wrong to start before you think about that; it's just that you might end up with something that has to be changed once you go through that exercise and identify the "why" and the goals and objectives.

John:

Hence you as editor-in-chief, you as publisher, I see you constantly speaking with our clients about, "Well, wait a minute: let's talk about restructuring. Let's talk about, you know, your 'why'." And we often, once we get a, get somebody on board or you're, you're speaking with somebody and, and this is not particularly Ingenium Books; his is any, any publisher-editor - they've got to understand where you want to go with the book and you're often kind of reworking it once you're introduced to that second person, who's going to get involved with the creative aspect of helping you write your book or edit your book.

Boni:

Yes. And there's an example in development to now with one of our authors who, we don't have a public announcement yet, and she doesn't have an author page, so I won't name her, but this is she's working - we're working with her on a book about social movements and driving social change. And so this is a perfect example where, and where we have this conversation over and over again, because it is so critical. And because you get into the detail of what is involved in how you build a social movement. I mean, in the States, it's, you know, do you set up your 501(c)(3) or is it a different structure? There's, you know, governance. There's you know, marketing. There's connections with community groups and all, all kinds of complexities - that it's so easy to lose sight of the "why".

Boni:

And in this particular author's case, the "why" is really to help her set up her next 10 years of her career, where she wants to help corporations set up social movements that can help them give back into the community. So that has a huge impact because really, she could write a book for nonprofits. She could write a book that was targeted for nonprofit organizations, but her "why" - her goals and objectives - are quite different. And of course her book is still going to be helpful for nonprofits, but it really does drive the kinds of information that we include, the type of information that we include, how we write it, how we structure it. So it's very ... And you can see how closely related it is to the audience. But it's, it's, it's a, it's very different. I just want - I know from where I sit, it looks like we have two people watching. Hi, I'm so happy. We have two people, but sometimes the data is lagging. Um anybody who's either watching this now or on replay, I want to encourage questions because ...

John:

Tell us where you're from.

Boni:

Yeah, tell us where you're from. Any, any any little bit. Otherwise I'll just keep blathering.

John:

Well, yeah. And, and so just coming off of what you were saying do you, have - you, you were, you mentioned to me earlier about the differences in these two books: you know, same subject matter, but identifying their "whys" created two different books. I didn't know if you had an example of that or something to ...

Boni:

Well, I have an example of two books and it's the, the books are always going to be different, but it's just going to be - let me just see if I can share my screen quickly here. And we'll take a look at... There: sharing my screen, and I've got this there; this there. So two of our recently published books: both of these books were published in late 2019. On the left hand side is "Just Do You: Authenticity, Leadership and Your Personal Brand", written by Lisa King. On the right hand side is "In the Thick of It" - uh I have to look at - "Mastering the Art of Leading from the Middle", by Gwyn Teatro. So these are both books aimed to help leaders and leaders to develop their craft, get better at what they do. The differences are - and in the, you know, the "whys" with both of these authors were fairly easy to nail down, and it does affect so many elements of the book - but so on the Lisa King side, "Just Do You", she ... Her business, Daneli Partners works with emerging leaders to develop strengths in the area, obviously of authenticity. You can see from the subtitle.

Boni:

So her audience is a young person. In many cases, they're going into colleges and universities and working with leaders who are emerging in this space. And juxtaposed against that, Gwyn's book, "In the Thick of It: Mastering the Art of Leading from the Middle", Gwyn's book is for people midlife, mid-career, juggling aging parents and children, feeding bosses and serving bosses above them while managing people below them. So they're both books about leadership. They both are excellent books, but they, the, the, the motivation, hence the audience is different. And the motivation - let me talk about that for a moment, because this is the core of the "why": Lisa, both of them want to help people, obviously. That's, that's one of the key kind of foundations of uh, of a strong "why" that is very helpful when you're writing this kind of nonfiction. So Lisa wants to help people.

Boni:

She is trying to - with her book, she's trying to provide a resource for existing clients, as well as attracting attention for new clients. Gwyn: Gwyn's book began out of the idea that her series of blogs - she had a very popular blog for about seven years where she posted weekly, um and her blog was called "You're Not the Boss of Me". And she wanted to leverage the information in that blog and to help those people in the middle of her career. So if we just take a look at - I'm trying to now change my ... There we go. If we take a look at Lisa's book, "Just Do You": so the audience she's trying to reach is emerging leaders; it's the Gen Z. What that means in terms of the content that was written inside the book? She includes links to lead magnets and downloadable worksheets.

Boni:

It's a, it's a book where people are encouraged to go to the Daneli Partners website to get more information. And as I mentioned before, her book is really designed to help her support existing clients, as well as attract new ones. Now that "why" has, you know - that affects elements of the cover design. It affects elements of - you know, she's got anecdotes from young people in the book to demonstrate how some of her exercises can be applied. Now, Gwyn, in "In the Thick of It", as I said, she's targeting midlife, mid-career people. She has not included lead magnet links or downloadable links because that's not part of her objective. She wasn't looking to build a client base. She wasn't looking to foster an existing business. She really, really wanted to pass on what she learned about leadership from a career in human resources, leadership positions in major banks in Canada.

Boni:

And her book is full of retrospective anecdotes, as opposed to the stories from other young people at the same at the same spot. So that that is kind of a little bit of a deep dive into the two examples. And now I'm trying to get back to where I can stop sharing my screen. Stop screen. There we go.

John:

So we're at 20 minutes right now. I've got a few more questions. Can we take it for another few minutes?

Boni:

Of course. We can go till - we can go as long as we want, but we ... Yeah, of course.

John:

Okay. So, so just to recap: that determining your "why" doesn't only help you identify your reader, but it also affects the cover design. It affects the elements that go inside the book and how those elements get to the, get to the reader. Does determining your "why" affect the quality of the book?

Boni:

It shouldn't. Um it can. It can, it can affect subtle things about the quality. We come from the position and the perspective of, you know, quality is always important, whether you're self publishing, working with an independent hybrid publisher like Ingenium Books, or, or you're printing a PDF document off to hand out to family and friends. Uh quality is always important. So it's really not - it's really not about that. It can affect it. I mean, if you're writing a book and you've determined that your "why" is - you know, you and I were talking when we were figuring out what we were going to talk about today, and we were talking about, you know, Joe, the small-business accountant, and you know, if it's Joe, the small-business accountant and Joe has developed a unique approach to working with his small-business clients and his "why" is about making sure that his kids and his kids' kids know about this cool thing that he's done and created, it's possible that that would affect how much he decides to invest in the development of the book. Which you could say could affect the quality, but it's really not, it's really not about that.

Boni:

That's kind of a corollary to it. So for Joe, it might be just fine to produce a book that really doesn't have much of a cover and that really is just a, you know, a printed out PDF, so he wouldn't have to necessarily invest in a cover design. However any time any book - and this is our position for, for any independent, self-published author - anytime you're planning on putting a book out there for the public to see, quality is important. Since 2008 and the explosion of desktop publishing and the advent of the Kindle and Amazon, and all of that stuff that enabled independent authors to start publishing their books on their own, um there has been a a whiplash or a backlash against poor quality. And so there is a concept out there, that's still lingering, that if you, if you're not working with a traditional publisher, that your book is no good. And that is simply not true. So we would never say, "Establish your 'why' so that you can decide what the quality is." Don't plan to put out a book that isn't absolutely the best that it can be. Yeah.

John:

Yep. Yep. And just a couple more questions. And I think this is important because when people are taking the burden of writing the book themselves the question is: how does identifying the "why" upfront affect your actual writing?

Boni:

Yeah, that's a really important notion. And I alluded to this a little bit in the comparison between Lisa's book, "Just Do You", and Gwyn's "In the Thick of It", but it affects your writing because it affects the structure. It affects the order in which you are presenting information, because your "why", your goals and objectives and your audience: if you're looking at your audience, what do they need? Where are they coming from? What's their starting point? And having done that work, you know what that starting point is. So you know how to start writing the book. If you don't, if you haven't made those links - why, goals, objectives, audience - you don't know where they're starting from. You're writing where you think the starting point is, and it might not be right. And there are all kinds of other things too: do you want short, snappy sentences? Do you, you know, are you speaking technical language? Is it okay to speak technical language, to write technical language? Do you want to use diagrams and images? Do you - you know, all kinds of things. So it really does affect how you write, what you write, the types of anecdotes that you use. It really - everything.

John:

And so our listeners, our people who are watching today, uh probably most of them are, most of them are, you know, wanting to self-publish in one way or another, but self-publishing in one way or another usually means not doing a hundred percent of the work yourself. Sometimes it does, but it doesn't mean ... So how does it affect - how does deciding or figuring out your "why" at the top affect the team that you work with? Because there are potentially many different team members that you, you know, you can work with to publish a book.

Boni:

Exactly. Yeah. And that's also another important thing. So depending on your "why" - on your goals and objectives - you may ... It'll help you decide, what are the things I can keep doing, keep for myself? What, what are the tasks and the functions that I would like to partner with another professional? Do I want to write the first draft myself, or am I going to be better served to start working with a ghostwriter right away? Your "why" is going to tell you, is going to inform that. Um it will inform who you choose to edit and proofread. It will inform, you know, there are lots of - I mean, that's one of the wonderful things about what's happening with the publishing industry now is that there are really talented professionals out there who are available to work with independent authors, should they choose to project manage on their own.

Boni:

And there are lots of, you know, great organizations like us at Ingenium Books and lots of other ones. There's lots of choice out there. So it's important to shop around. But lots of people that offer, you know, the full meal deal: project management, help along every step of the way, the way, the way we, we can - we can do it either the whole project with you or one job at a time. So your "why" is going to tell you what kind of specialist you are looking for. It's going to tell you, you know, what kind of - if you're doing your project management yourself and you're directly hiring and directly working with each different craftsperson along the way. There are cover designers out there who specialize in fantasy, just because they're very talented artists and, you know, cover designer for fantasy books doesn't mean that they'll serve you very well for your leadership coaching book. So it really, it does, you know - and some of that I'm over-exaggerating - it's really a nuanced thing. But it really does make a difference when, when you're choosing and selecting the team that you work with.

John:

Yeah. So determining your "why" is super, super important out front and, and because it affects so many other things down, down the line and all of your activity, your thinking, your creative process moving forward from the day you say, "I want to write a book," to the day you end up publishing.

Boni:

Yeah. And the final thing that I would say that we didn't mention - and this may be the most important thing - is that identifying why you want to write the book and what you want to get out of it is hardwiring your motivation. And these are often big, long, detailed projects that take time and energy and focus. And the more you can connect to the "why" and what you want to get out of it, the easier you're making that energy flow to make sure that you can - 'cause it's a long haul. I mean, we've been working with some authors for three years. These are potentially long projects. You know, others come from start to finish in five, five months, but it's a lot of work. And if you can connect with your "why" and stay motivated and keep the energy flowing, that is only going to benefit you in the long run.

John:

Yeah. And just like in good business practice or good personal management if you have this picture of where you want to be and where you want to go in front of you in a simple way, but in a very vivid way, it helps you to get there. And I think identifying the "why" is the beginning of creating that picture.

Boni:

That is exactly right. And that's our time.

John:

It is. Yeah. Thanks everybody for sticking with us and watching. And for those who will revisit this afterward post questions and tell us where you're from.

Boni:

And the one final thing is we'll be here next week, same time. And we're going to be talking with Heidi Hackler who has published a journal called "Food, Mood, & Gratitude". And we're going to talk about the value of journals and workbooks in support of a business. So that's next week.

John:

Thanks everyone.

Boni:

Thanks, John.

John:

Thank you, Boni. Bye bye.

Boni:

Bye bye.