Hello and welcome to this week's edition of The Coaching Inn, which is our last episode for Season 4. And it's a delight to have today the company of Ginny Carter, author of How to Write a Self-Help Book. Ginny, you and I met at the Business Book Awards and I can see there's a thing, your Business Book Award picture is behind you. Welcome to The Coaching Inn, Ginny. Thank you very much for having me. I'm looking forward to having a chat.
Yours is the book that pulled together all the wisdom that took me 10 years to get from small conversations with lots of different people and a whole lot more. Tell us a bit about your journey to writing How to Write a Self-Help Book. Well, okay, so first of all, I'm absolutely delighted that you found it so helpful. that's so nice, so nice to get feedback from people. So yeah, mean, so where do I start? I mean, I've been a business book ghostwriter and a book coach for many years now.
Ghosted over 25 books and I've coached many people to write their own books. Some of them business books, some of them self-help books, some them memoirs.
and I entered a book called Your Business Your Book which is about how to write a business book so it's a bit meta, know, it's a book about how to write a book and won an award for that a few years ago and so when I wrote How to Write a Self-Help Book I entered it for an award as well and was delighted to be shortlisted and the reason that I wrote it was because well actually it really went back to the awards themselves, I'd been a judge in those awards for quite a few years actually.
not in the years when I entered my books of course because that would have been a bit of a conflict of interest but I judged the self-help category for two years on the trot and so as a result I read countless self-help books in a very short space of time much more know a slightly artificial environment and one of the things I found was that some of those books did you know they really hit the mark they were brilliant and some of them just had certain things that
weren't right about them, which was really frustrating for me because I kind of thought, well, these people have got all this really valuable advice and insights to give. And if they only knew what to do, they could write a better book. And I worked out that there were only three things that they were doing wrong on a consistent basis. And then it just occurred to me one day, you know, as the best ideas do when I was doing nothing related to books at all, that I could write a book.
helping people to write a better self-help book. So I turned to my keyboard again and then this book was the result. Yeah. So are you willing to share the three things?
Yeah so well the first of them really is the main one which is that a lot of self-help books fall into the trap of telling people what to do rather than leading them to do it in a way that it makes it seem like it's just the most obvious and reasonable conclusion to take and this isn't an easy thing to do you know this is not being persuasive with your writing it's not an easy process it's not something we're born knowing how to do.
But I'm sure a lot of these people who are writing the self-help books, I mean, they usually work with people in person. They're often coaches, consultants, therapists, trainers of one kind or another. And I'll bet when they talk to somebody as one of their clients, they don't tell them what to do, you know, because we know that isn't the best way to get somebody to change their, change their behavior, change their thinking. And so you kind of have to learn how to do it in a book.
And that isn't, you know, that... as I said, is not an easy process. that was the first thing. The second thing was that they often weren't making their credibility very obvious. And I think this may be a bit of a thing that's a bit more specific to self-help authors than maybe to other authors, because I guess when you're working in a helping profession, it maybe feels a little bit icky to talk about yourself, to talk about, well, talk yourself up, I guess.
And I think the thing is that readers do need to know. what makes you qualified to write the book. They want to trust you. They want to have faith in what you're saying. They don't want to be wondering, how does she know this? They don't want to be questioning in their mind while they're reading. it's important to make that clear up front and also throughout the book. And there's various ways you can do that without appearing arrogant.
And then the third one was really more about not making the advice clear in terms of what steps you should take, so not translating the advice into actionable steps that you can take going forward and actually put into practice. And again, there are certain ways you can do that which motivate people and help to get them involved, but if you don't do that then you're just sending people away with a lot of theory and not much to do with it. So those are the three key things. That's great.
of course, writing a self-help book is a desire of some coaches and some coaches want to write just a book book that isn't a self-help book. One of the things I noticed, and I'd love to hear your take on this, is even when I started coaching, people would say, every coach is writing a book. And I notice over time I get loads of people saying to me, I'm writing a book. And in my head, I've got somebody, somebody told me that the average nonfiction book sells 350 copies.
And the other thing that I notice is that often people will write the book and they won't tell anybody else that they've written it until they've finished a beautiful manuscript and put the last full stop on it and saved it as a document. And nobody in the world has seen it. You're pulling a face, which is what I kind of expected. So what would you like to say to people who are in that space, Ginny? Yeah, Well, I guess there's two things you brought up there. One is about sales, isn't it?
About not selling enough. And one is about your book being your best kept secret. And the two are obviously connected. But I think I'd just like to pick up on the thing about the numbers of sales first, because I think there's often this misconception that you have to sell thousands of copies of your book if it's going to be a success. And of course, we all want to sell lots of copies of our book. no doubt about it.
We don't sit there for months on end slaving away over a keyboard to have our book ignored. But actually it really depends on what you're writing your book for. And if you're writing it, for instance, to become better known in your industry or to bring you more business or clients, to spread the word about your expertise in a new market maybe or in an area that you're not going to be able to reach people in very directly through any other means, you don't always have to sell.
loads and loads and loads of copies. It's actually who buys it and who reads it is the most important thing. And some of the books actually that are the big bestsellers, the ones we've all heard of, you know, they're not always the best and most helpful books, I think, I mean, because they're written for a much more general audience. They're not very specifically targeted to their readership. And it's when the book is for you, that's when it really helps you.
So I just want to kind of flag that up first. in terms of telling people about the book. Yeah, I mean, it is really, really helpful if you're open about your book from the beginning. And I have to say, I'm not a terribly good example of that myself. I could have been a lot more open about it. But I think getting beta readers involved is where it's really useful because that was a real learning curve for me in both the books I wrote in my own name. I found it useful for two reasons, actually.
One was that you get useful feedback. Well, three reasons. One, to get useful feedback. Two, is that it gives you a group of people who are interested in your book, who can help you promote it when you launch, when you publish. Because they're already behind it and they're already involved and that's like an inner circle. So that's nice.
The third reason is one that actually I'd never really thought of until I did it, which was that it gives you a chance to... rehearse the publishing of the book in a sense like if this is the first time you're making it available to people to read it gives you a chance to get over those collie wobbles before you actually go to the big wide world the big scary wide world and it really helped me with the pre-publication jitters because I knew that people had read it
people had liked it they gave me feedback I put it into action There was no reason, there was no logical reason for me to feel worried about it, but I would have felt it was the big unknown if I hadn't have done that. So I think that's a really good, and actually I think then the more confident you feel, the better you'll promote it because every time you talk about it, you'll know it's good, you'll know it's going to do its job. And that just makes so much difference.
Yeah. When I wrote Simplifying Coaching, that wasn't the title and I had been sat with the title of the book I was never going to write. It was called Simply Coaching, because I think that's a nice play on words and all of those things. And when the publisher said to me, if you've got a book you'd like to write for us, I went, yeah, I have actually. It's called Simply Coaching. And she went, that's not going to be the title. And I'm going, that's my title. That's my title.
Yeah. And she said, We are going to change the title and you're going to be very grateful. And we did and I am. Because she said the title needs to say what the book's about, not be a play on words about what it's about. And yes, you're right, simply coaching is a lovely phrase, but it's meaningless. Yeah, and it's not as distinctive as well, that's the title you ended up with. I think it's more important for a title to be clear than it is to clever, I think. I only just came up with that.
There you go. There you are, there's another bit for your next book that you're writing in your own name, Ginny. I think the other thing that I learned from both these last two books was to get the publisher involved early enough that they could give some wise, a wise steer, which I could have taken no notice of. But again, in Simplifying Coaching, she said it will sell better if you talk about how the professional bodies view what you're writing about.
So I want you to put a section in every chapter that connects to all of the professional bodies. And I'm thinking, well, I don't want to do that. But equally, I know that the editor was more wise than I am in the industry. I know about my subject, they know about publishing in my subject, which is not the same thing, is it? And again, that was really... you know, really sound advice and also the things about order of chapters and what other chapters need to be in there.
And for me, what I say to people who are coming and saying, I want to publish a book, what advice would you give me is talk to a publisher before you've finished writing it, because they will give you so much more help. Yeah, sure, yeah. And also, I think they're just objective about it as well. You've got a kind of a cold eye on it, you somebody who's not wedded to it in the way that you are.
I remember when I talked to my publisher about the title, actually, of How to Write a Self-Help Book, and I was a bit worried, it was a bit basic. I had the same thing as you, I feel like I should be more clever. And she said, why not just call it How to Write a Self-Help Book? Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, sometimes you just need somebody to give you a of a slap, don't you? You know, get you back into the real world and out of your head, really, into the world of the reader.
And we're both published, aren't we, by the awesome Alison Jones at Practical Inspiration. Wonderful woman that she is. Yeah. Somebody sent me a manuscript about a year, two years ago and said, this is my book, right up to the last full stop. Nobody's, all the publishers are saying, no, you know, I've got myself an agent, it's not working. What do you think? And I had a good look at it and I said, this is a great book, but you wrote it without anyone shaping it with you.
Hmm So it may be that you need to take a step back and not send the final manuscript to some poor soul who's got to read it, but actually send more of a proposal so that they can see if they buy the idea and then you can for-shake the manuscript to work. And they're about to be published, which is fantastic. And they asked me to endorse the new edition and it's... it's the same and so not the same and that's such a beautiful thing isn't it?
Yeah, that's wonderful and so often when a book isn't working actually it's the structure that's wrong, you know, it's something to do with the flow of information so you can have the most beautifully worded book in the world but if people don't get it, like you know when you read a book and you just think I just don't get it, I don't really quite
understand where they're coming from and it's almost always because the structure is just off somehow and if you don't get that right at the beginning you can waste a lot of time writing something that just doesn't work. I'm not that organized. Don't tell me you're a panzer. You just let it flow. I but then I cut it up. I have two or three times where I print the whole thing out and cut it up with scissors and go, well, that's going in the bin and that fits with that.
because for me, I find I find flow on a screen really difficult because of course you can only see the pages that you're on. Yeah, I always a bit in my in how to write a self-help book where I give a technique for doing that actually, which is all to do with like looking at the meaning of each bit of the book and then numbering it essentially. So it's like, you you can, call it chunking. So it's like you, you can reorder things really easily.
And actually I use that a lot when I go strike books, because when I talk to people, it all comes out in a flow of, you know, whatever happens to occur to them in that. moment and when I then have to go away and take all that information and get it into a sensible order, that has saved my bacon so many times. But I do know some people do go in print it out and cut it up and everything and know that whatever works for you I mean it's sometimes there's something quite satisfying about that.
Yeah, yeah, except I got caught at the airport with scissors. dear. And I'm going, no, because I did look it up and these scissors, the blades are short enough to be able to, that you should be letting me through. They did let me through in the end. I know my daughter when she was about six got caught with some those little kids scissors, you know, she just packed them in her bag without thinking, I didn't even know they were in there. yeah, so I learned that early.
Yeah, I just think actually going out into the garden, I did a proofread edit of a book where I printed it all out. And I was, you know, it was a lovely summer's day and I sat out in the garden. you know, it was a bit like that kind of thing with I don't know if you saw, was it Love Actually with Colin Firth and he's editing his manuscript and then all the papers blow away. I don't have a lake, luckily, but they just went everywhere. The pages, the neighbours gardens, were just everywhere.
I learned my lesson there that you can't be too clever with these things. Sometimes it's best to just stay indoors, do it on a screen. Don't try and take advantage of the beautiful sunshine. I love that. So you've authored how many books? 20? well, I wouldn't say I've authored them because of course my clients are my authors, but I've hosted over 25 books.
Yeah. So and I, one of the things that's never ceases to amaze me is although, you know, I've got better and quicker at it as time has gone by, every book is different and has its own little challenges. it's never like a question of having a template. You know, I do have certain principles that I adhere to, but it's I just really enjoy that process of making each book its own book, for its own author as well. The personality of the author, the voice, the ideas, the audience as well of course.
That's important thing to take into account. Yeah, so that's you trying to get the voice of the author when you're ghosting. What about finding your own voice for your books? Yeah, yeah, so I didn't really find that very difficult actually, but I do understand when people do if they've not written a book before. I think I've done a lot of writing over the years, even before I wrote books, I'd written done a lot of blogs. So and I'd been writing all my life in one way or another.
So for me, I just felt quite confident. writing as me and actually one of the things the nice bits of feedback I've had from various people is like yeah I can just tell that's yours I can totally hear you when I read that. So I think that's so important I mean people sometimes feel that they have to be I don't know a bit kind of formal or you know sometimes when I'm coaching people to write their books I have to encourage them just not use long words or not use words that you would never say.
sometimes I say, would you use the word individual instead of person? Nobody talks about, I met an individual the other day. You just don't say it, do you? But now in a book, somehow it kind of feels like the right thing to do. So yeah, being yourself, really important. yeah, writing simply. quite easy to be yourself when you wrote your book. Every book I write, I find it impossible to find the right voice for that book for ages.
So my style now, because I think I've written quite a lot, not just the coaching ones, I'd written others before that. The thing that I do is that I take forever to write a random chapter. So I think which is the chapter that I'm most excited about writing? And then I might take three, four, five months to write that chapter. And each time I look at it, I go, no, that's not the right voice.
But then in that chapter, in the end, I found sort of approximately the structure that might just about work and the voice that feels like it's the right voice. And then once I've got that, the rest of the book comes really fast because you've got a kind of shape to drop things into. Yeah, I can totally see that, but I think what you've done really well there is to lay your groundwork, haven't you? You haven't rushed in and just written the whole thing before you've got the basics right.
And that's, that I can see was really important for the book. So the next book, my collaborators in the next book are being very patient with me because I'm going, the structure doesn't matter. Let's just find our voice. Because once we find our voice, then we know the book we want to write. And then when we've done that, then we can then then it'll be easy. Yeah, and how's it going? We're in the middle of finding our voice Ginny. So it's complete chaos if you want the truth.
So you'll come back to me in three months and let me know. Hopefully, no, it won't be any further on by the time this episode goes out. But hopefully by, you know, yeah, in three months time, we'll have a bit more clarity. I'm sure But I think for me, there's something about actually really just going, is an active, for me, it's better to just go, we've no idea how to do this. So three authors, and one of the questions for me is, do we talk to each other?
Do we each write different chapters or do we do something else? Yeah, it is a challenge when there's more than one author. I I've ghosted many books. they're always more complicated. I mean you'd think it would be easier for the authors to share the load but I actually think it increases the work. But I can see that it is more rewarding and it is very satisfying to do this thing with other people. I you get all their inputs and you can share the emotional load of it.
But yeah there's always more decisions to make I think when you've got more than one person for sure. yeah, we've got to what do we each uniquely bring? And I think it'll probably be a conversation, but we'll see, because we've got to give it a go. Yeah, well that's good for you. and see what randomly comes out of that.
But I was talking to someone the other day about their book and they've got a spreadsheet with all the chapters and all the sections and everything and I thought, my giddy on, that sounds so efficient and so organized, I couldn't possibly do that. Well, you've got to do what works for you. that's the approach I take, is the organised approach. But of course, when I'm working with clients, I do have to treat it as a business project, essentially.
So we have a time scale and structure and we have to agree certain things up front. But when it's your own book, you can do what works for you. So how do people come to you for ghost writing? they? Yeah, I'm just curious. That's a very wide open question. Various means, but usually through my website, mean people do tend to search for ghostwriters online. If they want a ghostwriter, they'll look for one, essentially. That's generally the way it works.
It's not sort of thing that you think, I'll only think of working a ghostwriter if I happen to meet one. It's not usually the way it works. So usually it's through my website or through LinkedIn. Those are the two main ways.
Also through other ghost writers or other writers who might refer work to me if they're too busy and they might say I'll speak to my colleague and vice versa I may refer work to other people and people often, you know, I tend to get quite booked up several months ahead of time and so I'm not always available so it's useful to have a network, very nice to have that support.
I think what was behind my question was, do people say, I need a ghostwriter, or does somebody else say to them, you need to find a ghostwriter? Actually, it depends. Sometimes it's publishers. Sometimes it's publishers. Look, you tried this, like, long, it's just not working. You know, for the love of God, please find a ghostwriter. Yeah, so that can, it can sometimes come from that.
More often, though, I think people, business people especially, are just really busy and they just know they haven't got the time or energy to sustain, know, to sustain the whole book, to get them to the end of it. Or they may just realise that it's not their skill. better off spending their time and energy on other things.
So most of time people are pretty self-aware and know that it's the right thing for them and actually it's better that way because I'd rather work with somebody who really wants to get it right and someone who's been you know kind of given it as an ultimatum. Yeah, yeah. Can we just move to book awards? Mm-hmm. Yeah. So you've been a judge, you've been a winner, you've been shortlisted.
Yeah, yeah, I've been everything actually thinking about I never heard about it like that before, but yes, you're right. So what are the benefits that you see for entering things for awards? Well, I guess you've always got a shot at winning, if you don't enter, you have to be in it to win it, I guess. That's the phrase, isn't it? I think entering for an award does make you think about the value of your book. So even if you don't, can get shortlisted. You've got really nothing to lose.
I mean, there's a bit of time, possibly a bit of money for an entry fee, maybe a little bit of wounded pride if you don't get anywhere with it, but you just have to accept that that might happen. And I think it does make you think, you know, just even the entry process makes you think about how you're going to talk about your book. But I mean, if you get shortlisted or if you win, it's just a wonderful PR boost for your book, essentially. I it's a bit like being a bestseller.
You can always say, won an award for this book. And for me, of course, as a professional writer, it's doubly helpful. I think it's always worth giving it a shot. for sure. And actually, one of the things I found through judging the awards as well was that it really helped me as a writer in terms of identifying what makes a good book. Because in the judging process, especially in the early stages where you're doing the shortlisting, you've got whole piles of books to read.
And inevitably, you can't spend very long on each book. So you're making quite quick judgments about whether this is a book that you feel has the potential to win. And so it's been very useful for me to think, well, how did I make that decision? What was it that got me there? And I really, I knew this already, but it just really drummed home the message that your book just has to be so crystal clear about what it's for. What's in it for me as a reader to read this book? What am going to get?
And there's usually only one big thing. And it's very easy to overcomplicate it. and overstate it and get confused about it. But the blurb on the back and the intro at the beginning, he's just got to leave people in no doubt about that one big thing they're going to get from it. And if you can get that across, then you're onto a winner. So you've talked a lot through the whole conversation about being even more clear about what you're trying to communicate.
And what a beautiful thing that is for all of us, not just in book writing, but in other contexts as well. Yeah, I think you're right because I'm a big one on big fan of clarity and I think being clear, one of the benefits of writing a book is even aside from everything that comes after you publish it, is that you get clear on what you want to say about your expertise. It forces you to think it through in depth, come up with ways of talking about it, vocabulary to describe it.
that's going to work for people. And so even if you're just talking about it, that will be a benefit to you. And I'm not naturally a speaker. I mean, I don't really get into speaking. I do enjoy doing podcast interviews, but that's my limit. You know, I know my limits. And yet I find that through writing, I do speak more clearly, more eloquently, I think about things through having written about them. So I think it gives you a language to talk about. what you do.
yeah, one of the things that thrills me most is to see people put clips on LinkedIn or little quotes. you think, I write that? Really? Yeah, yeah. And it's great when you get to that moment where you're editing the book and you haven't seen it for a while and then you think, well, I'm actually not bad, but I thought, you know, because when you're in the thick of it, it's hard to say whether you're writing well or not, isn't it? You just, you can't think like that.
And then when you look back on it after a few weeks or months and see things that you wrote that really work, you know, that's good, it? That was my biggest learning with simplifying coaching. Cause when it came back to me for that final edit, they said, you know, you can only make really small changes now, but because there'd been a break, actually I looked at it and thought, well, if I was writing again, wouldn't have written it like that at all.
So for the human behind the coach, we had another fire break. So I've got a little rule for myself now that eight weeks between finishing it and submitting it to the publisher. where nothing happens to it at all. So that in that final week I can come back to it and go, well, that's a bit rubbish. That's brilliant. I love the idea of describing it as a fire break. That is cool. I'm going to nick that because that's a great way of talking about it because it turns that gap into something useful.
Like what felt before like you weren't doing anything and maybe you were being slacking off from the work on the book actually is a useful pause and a necessary one as well. Yeah, when you've got the potential to move chapter seven to become chapter two and cut out half of chapter 10 and make it chapter, well, make it put it in the bin. Because all of that's a bit big when the pagination's already been looked at. Yes, yes.
And also, if you've only just written it, you're much more invested in it. You're much more emotionally attached to those chapters that need to come out. Yeah, and you can use those chapters elsewhere. You could maybe use them in a blog or in some other kind of content. It's like, I always say nothing's ever wasted, but it feels really hard, really hard to cut out a lot when you just... a whole section out of The Human Behind the Coat. Well, I said to Lucia, this is the wrong book.
Yeah. She said, how does this flow? And I'm going, I think it's in the wrong book. So let's just take all of that and put it somewhere else. So I've got a file on my computer, just one file, it's called The Wrong Book. the cutting room floor. I often think as well that sometimes if you're really struggling with a particular bit of the book it's because it shouldn't be there.
So I I remember when I wrote Your Business, Your Book, I had an idea to write a chapter about speaking and the process of marketing your book and know because speakers often have books and they often talk about their books and it's a way of getting speaking engagement. And then I was really struggling with it because I just don't really speak. I mean, I've done a bit of speaking, but not enough to write the book, know, chapter of a book about it.
So then I was thinking, well, should I speak to other speakers and interview them? How am going to get around the fact this isn't a topic that I don't really feel very confident in? And then I thought, why don't I just not put it in? Just leave it out. Like, I'm not competent at it. I'm sure there's other people who've written much better books about that than I. so I'll just leave that chapter out. And it's like the sense of relief. It was like, I just don't have to do it.
Great. So often I think that's just the answer is to, know, struggling, struggling with something it shouldn't be there. Yeah. Yeah, because you're describing that making it up. Well, you know, in a professional way, making it up rather than it coming from inside you. Yeah. And I often think with every person, they've got three levels really of expertise. One is the very pinnacle, the bit that nobody can touch them on, the bit that they're rock solid on.
Then there's a bit below it which is like, you know a lot about it, but it's more because you're an expert rather than because it comes from deep within you. And that's fine to write about that, because that can often be the bit that needs to support the topic. And then there's that bottom bit, which is stuff about, I wouldn't charge somebody for this advice on this area, but I do know quite a lot about it. Well, just leave it out. Just don't put that in. And then your book is bespoke for you.
That is so useful. Good. I'll take that one. love. So Ginny's book is called How to Write a Self Help Book by Ginny Carter and I love the bit where you talk about what kind of deal to have. Because now I don't have to say that to anybody, I can just send them to your book. great! Yeah, it's like the three different types of publishing, traditional, hybrid and self. Yeah, but it's really useful because they've all got pluses and minuses, haven't they? Yeah, exactly.
And I think it so much depends on what you want out of your book and why you're writing it. What is it you want to achieve with your book? That's the one thing you really need to know before you start doing anything. Because if you don't know the answer to that, you can't really answer a lot of other questions about your book. Like, what's going to go with it? Who it's for? How are going to publish it? How are you going to market it? It all hangs off that.
Yeah, brilliant. Well, Ginny Carter, thank you so much for coming to The Coaching Inn. I'll put your details of your book in the show notes and if people want to contact you, how do they do that? Yeah, so the best thing to do is to go to my website. It's Ginny Carter, dot co dot UK. So that's Ginny with a G I double N Y. Or look me up on LinkedIn, because I'm often on there and I enjoy chat. I'll put that in the show notes. Thank you for coming. And thank you everyone for listening.
That's a wrap for Season 4. Season five starts next week. Bye bye. Bye.