July 23, 2025 • 32 mins
Today, Claire Pedrick talks with Lucy McCarraher, a seasoned publisher and author, about the evolving world of publishing. Lucy demystifies the publishing process, explaining how hybrid models empower authors to invest in their own book production.
They explore Lucy’s new book "Book Magic" and the unexpected, positive outcomes authors experience after publishing. Lucy shares invaluable advice for aspiring writers and the importance of planning before writing. She also highlights the importance of identifying your specific audience and writing for them, rather than trying to appeal to everyone.
Hear practical tips, such as the importance of establishing a consistent writing habit and the liberating advice to just get it out in your first draft without editing. Lucy reassures listeners that the emotional rollercoaster of writing is normal and that nothing written is wasted. This episode is a treasure trove for anyone looking to understand the publishing landscape and navigate the authorial journey with confidence.
Contact:
- Contact Lucy through Linked In
- Contact Claire by emailing info@3dcoaching.com or check out our Substack where you can talk with other listeners.
Further Information:
- Subscribe or follow The Coaching Inn on your podcast platform or our YouTube Channel to hear or see new episodes as they drop.
- Find out more about 3D Coaching and get new ideas and offers in our weekly email.
Coming Up:
- Julie Smith on Coaching Yourself Confident
Keywords:
publishing, hybrid publishing, book writing, author tips, Book Magic, writing process, coaching, entrepreneur authors, self-publishing, writing habits
We love having a variety of guests join us! Please remember that inviting someone to participate does not mean we necessarily endorse their views or opinions. We believe in open conversation and sharing different perspectives.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:15):
Hello and welcome to this week's edition of The Coaching Inn, which building from lastweek is another take on book writing.
uh So I'm excited to have uh a publisher, Lucy McCarraher and she's gonna be talking aboutall things books.
First of all, do remember to subscribe or follow to be able to get access to every episodeas it drops and check out our sub stack.
(00:43):
inside the coaching in for all kinds of behind the scenes thinking out loud and stuff.
Lucy, hello, welcome.
Hello, Claire.
Thank you so much for inviting me today.
a real pleasure.
So publishing, my hot favourite topic at the moment, tell us what got you into thispublishing business Lucy.
(01:07):
it was a kind of long and circuitous route.
Now I started off in publishing, I started off in magazine publishing a very long time agowhen I started my first business.
And then I sort of in and out of it, I've worked for various publishers.
And then I came back into publishing after various other iterations of my life.
About 14 years ago, when I joined Joe Gregory, my business partner in his then publishingcompany,
(01:36):
that was called Bookshaker and he had started a company that specifically catered to thebooks of entrepreneurs, coaches, consultants, business leaders.
And it was a traditional business model business.
I thought that with the, mean, obviously, you know how publishing works in terms of abusiness model, traditional publishers invest in the book and make their return on their
(02:01):
investment from
sales, trade sales, mostly of books and sales to authors, but it's all about sellingcopies of books.
The authors that we were publishing there were not necessarily that interested in makingloads of trade sales, they were writing books to build their businesses.
And that would usually involve giving away lots of copies to prospects clients using theirbook as essentially a marketing tool.
(02:31):
So I suggested that we start a new venture, we trial something that wasn't really evencalled hybrid publishing at the time, where there was a different business model.
The authors paid for the production of their book.
And then there wasn't that pressure on either the author or the publisher to make lots oftrade sales in order to make their money back.
(02:52):
So we sort of tentatively tried that and thought, you know, well, you know, it may work orit may not.
actually it worked incredibly well and uh entrepreneur authors were only too happy to seethis as a marketing investment and uh not just to you know sort of publish a book because
(03:13):
it was just the thing to do but because they had something really valuable to say theywanted a really well-produced book a professional book out there on the you know
distribution channels as well as Amazon that a professional publisher can access.
and help with promoting their book, using their book as that lead generator, as thataccess to visibility, speaking gigs, podcast interviews, all that sort of thing.
(03:43):
And just raising their influence and being the authority in their field.
So we started that 14 years ago and we're now the biggest UK hybrid publisher of businessbooks.
um And we publish 70 odd books a year.
We've published over a thousand entrepreneur authors and their books are doingfantastically well for their businesses.
(04:06):
So um that's the story.
Yeah, it's amazing, isn't it?
it's, you know, historically, that's not that long ago.
I can remember eh meeting a friend of mine who was a publisher of business books forHarperCollins around that time.
And I was saying to him, how do I get a publisher for a book that I've kind of got in mymind?
(04:32):
And he said, you want to go with self-publishing and get a professional designer to designthe cover.
Yep.
And of course, what hybrid publishing has done is it's really sitting beautifully in thatmiddle space.
I love it.
I love hybrid publishing.
hear.
Yes, I mean, think, of course, know, some, I mean, essentially, traditional publishers arelooking for authors that sell books, while we are looking at books that sell authors.
(05:03):
and, and, you know, at the other end of the scale is as you exactly as you say, the selfpublishing option.
And the trouble is most authors, especially if they're doing it for the first time, theydon't know what they don't know.
And you know, the nuts and bolts, the engine of publishing is much more complicated thanpeople tend to think it is and it's going to.
(05:26):
And also when you're when you're putting together the production of your book, so you dohave to involve professionals.
So self publishing is really a misnomer, because you cannot publish a book on your own, atleast not and get a decent outcome.
So you have to find the right editor, as you say, the right cover designer, the rightinterior designer and proofreader and all the other members of the team.
(05:50):
And again, know, project managing those, if you haven't done it before is kind of like,you know, can be like herding cats.
You don't know what quality of, of, people you're getting sometimes.
And so, you know, it's just makes so much sense to go with a publishing company who hasthat team and that experience.
And yeah, that's why we think it works very well for our authors.
(06:13):
Yeah, definitely.
And you've just written a book called Book Magic.
I have, yes, indeed.
So tell us about book magic Lucy.
Okay, I will tell you about book magic.
Can I hold up a copy uh of the cover?
Oh, wonderful.
Thank you, Claire.
So book magic is a term that I've been using for the last sort of 10 years or so about theoutcomes that authors get when they publish their book.
(06:41):
And I say, you know, there are certain things you can clearly expect and are prettypredictable.
But then there's always something that happens or several things that happen as a resultof publishing your book.
I can't predict, you can't predict, but they feel like magic.
So I call I've called that book magic.
We also uh have developed at Rethink Press, and I think we're unique in doing that, thisuh a because we realized that our authors are entrepreneur authors are experts in their
(07:09):
field, but not necessarily experts or certainly professional writers.
So we developed a process for positioning, planning and writing books.
that I've taken literally over 2,000 authors through to get their books written.
And we built up a coaching team, we have a fantastic coaching team who do this on aone-to-one basis.
(07:34):
But also last year we launched an app um called Bookmagic AI, which is an app for tape,the whole process has gone into that app.
So you can now subscribe to Bookmagic and get all that coaching and mentoring.
experienced go through the processes that we've developed, the step-by-step processes ofwriting your book.
(07:58):
um And it's, you know, it's available, it's just very inclusive, it's very available toeveryone.
It's cheaper, I have to say, than, you know, paying a coach to help you.
And in some ways, I mean, I think I'm really a pretty good book mentor after all theseyears.
But I would say that probably the app
does it better than me because it's there 24 seven.
(08:21):
uh never, you know, the program never ends.
It's with you until you finish and you can ask it all sorts of questions night or day.
And you know, the AI, I have to say the AI is not there to write the book for you.
That's a really important point that we make.
You must write your own book.
AI generated content is not okay in a published book.
(08:44):
It's great for lots of things like um
articles, blog posts, social media posts, all sorts of stuff, but not for a published bookfor copyright reasons and other reasons.
So the AI we've introduced into the book Magic App is wonderfully helpful in helping youposition to your ideal client avatar, to get structure for your book, to get ideas for
(09:07):
topics, you can ask it questions as if it were your ideal client.
So, you know, I'm writing about this topic, what else would you like to know?
And it's so smart.
It's very, very clever.
So, that's so book magic.
My book is the sort of companion in a way.
I mean, you can use it completely on its own.
You don't have to use the app, but basically it is the final iteration, I think, of myprocess of taking people through writing the book that will build their business.
(09:38):
uh And you can use it as, uh as, as a sort of companion to the app as well.
Oh, interesting.
So what are your top tips?
Because lots of our listeners, know, lots of our listeners really believe they have bookin them.
So what would your top tips be for them?
Okay, so my top tips are, well, one of my top tips is do it.
(10:00):
Because I think a lot of people have, you know, this great idea for a book.
mean, essentially, your book, the book that builds your business is you is what you do.
It's how you take your clients through the journey, whatever, whoever your clients are,it's how you take them from their pain to your promise.
And that is the content of your book.
(10:21):
So don't worry.
that you haven't got some unique, original, extraordinary idea for your book that loadsand loads of people are going to read.
That's not what your book is there for.
You don't have to write some extraordinary bestseller.
You have to write a book that talks directly to your own clients, your own market.
(10:42):
So don't worry.
Everything you need to write about is in your head.
It's your experience.
You know it already.
So have that confidence.
People don't always position their book to their market.
mean, for example, people think, oh, I'll write a book for everybody who can't afford myservices.
(11:03):
That's very generous of you, but it's not going to build your business because you need totalk to the clients who can afford your services.
You tell them all about you and your business as a matter, simply as a matter of value,not in a salesy way in your book.
and then they are drawn back to work with you and to buy your higher price services.
(11:27):
That's how you get the return on your investment.
So positioning is important.
The other tip is to plan in detail before you start writing.
Don't just plunge into the writing with this idea that, know, writing is a wonderfulcreative activity.
You'll get in the flow and it will all fall out of your head onto the page in the rightorder.
(11:49):
Usually it doesn't.
and that's where people get stuck.
They might kind of have a few chapter headings and think, I know what I'm talking about.
I'll just write it.
It'll all happen.
And usually a couple of chapters in, go, oh, I'm overwhelmed.
What do I do now?
I've got writer's block or I don't know what comes next.
What should I?
So the really kind of key thing is to plan in detail your book before you start writing sothat essentially you have a full, full detail contents page
(12:20):
then all you're doing is kind of filling in the gaps as you write and those are mine.
you, I am the person you're telling, don't do that.
okay, I'm sorry.
Oh dear.
Well, yeah, well, well, yeah, no, it's, it's, yeah, planning is, planning is really keyand it makes the writing so much easier.
(12:45):
I mean, I don't, you know, I don't want to sort of tell you what you should be doing, but,but that's what Bookmagic is really helpful with.
You go into the app and it takes you through this process.
and it has a great kind of planning process so that, you know, it tells you what you needto, where you need to start, how you need to organize your ideas and get them into the
(13:09):
right structure.
And then you go off on the writing process, which again is not just a big amorphous kindof project that has all sorts of bits in it, like researching and editing and proofreading
and check.
It actually is a step-by-step process.
and if you follow the process you don't get overwhelmed.
(13:31):
You never need to get writer's block if you've done your planning rigorously enough tobegin with um and you know it's sort of it can be overwhelming so if you take it in
manageable chunks you are going to get through the process step by step and you know youkind of come out the other end and you think oh I've written
(13:51):
30,000 words, I've got a book here, that's fantastic.
So those are my tips, I think.
think planning is a good idea and it doesn't work for me.
What have you tried Bookmagic?
Have you tried the app?
Because
and I'm far enough through the next book to, it's just found itself.
(14:14):
And I guess, I guess there's a difference, isn't there, between a first time author?
I've written quite a few books now.
And I think what I've learned for myself is that I just dump streams of consciousness indocuments, and then slowly over time work out what the book's about, and then what the
flow needs to be.
(14:35):
And
what just happened with the new book is that we got the chapter titles and now thecontents of those documents don't necessarily fit with the chapter titles but we've
suddenly unlocked it and now we've unlocked it the book writing from now on is quitequick.
Yeah, that's great.
That's great.
Yeah, I mean, I think everybody does have their own way of doing things and certainly bookmagic is particularly useful if you are a first time author, writer.
(15:06):
But having said that, I've written 14 books and I thought I must use the app to write mynext book, to write book magic.
And I did, and I was amazed that it made it so much easier and quicker.
And actually the process was really creative.
was like working, you know, with a friend, with a coach, with, you know, somebody who wasworking with me.
(15:28):
So all the...
and Bookmagic, I hope you went on a writing retreat together, you and the app.
Well, a writing retreat in my office, yes!
the great believer in writing retreats.
Oh, right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, I think one of the problems too is, is of writing a book when you're runninga business is finding the time to do it.
(15:51):
And yes, for some people, think writing retreats and getting it all, you know, having asustained period of time when you write is really good.
For other people, taking it on us again, a sort of step by step basis is good forprocessing.
If you haven't got it all there in your head.
then one of the writing habits that I've found works with an awful lot of people, I itdoesn't work for me either, particularly, but is to steal an hour a day out of your day.
(16:21):
You know, like get up an hour earlier, don't look at your email, don't do anything, justwrite for an hour.
You can get a thousand words out in an hour.
um
and then leave it, come back the next day and in 30 days, 30 to five days or whatever,you've got your first draft written.
Yeah.
(16:42):
Yeah, I did one where I got up every morning at six o'clock and did three hours.
That was one book.
Another book.
Yeah, I did actually.
Another one I did uh after work whenever I was traveling, if I'd finished delivery and Iwas delivering stuff that was kind of forming the content of the book at the end of
(17:04):
delivery.
If I was on a residential, I would go and
get an alcohol-free beer and I would sit for two hours in a pub in a quiet corner and kindof flow it out that way.
You know, it's...
I have, and now I'm trying Fridays really unsuccessfully, but anyway...
(17:26):
Brilliant.
there's always other work that needs to be done at the moment.
Yeah.
At the moment it's shouting, right, right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, but I think, you know, it's important while you're writing your book to form ahabit.
It doesn't matter which of those habits it is, but get into a habit while you're writing.
(17:49):
And it will again, you know, if you particularly if you can do things like go to the sameplace every time use the same, you know, really silly things like have the same mug with
the same drink in it.
uh If you're somebody who use it, who has music on in the background.
use the same track, just use those triggers where your brain goes, aha, writing time,let's go and you
(18:11):
so simplifying coaching was written in uh pubs and coffee shops.
And then just as it was being submitted to the publisher, like two weeks before when I wasdoing all the tidying up stuff, COVID hit.
No coffee shops.
No!
No, what did you do?
Well, a coach, he's been a guest here actually, a coach called Sam Isaacson told me aboutMyNoise.net, which is a, which is an app that generates white noise and it generates the
(18:41):
sound of a coffee shop and boom, off I went.
And I, I, when I'm writing at home, I still write with that in the background.
It's really interesting how different people's brains kind of, you know, respond todifferent stimuli, isn't it?
I mean, I like, I like silence when I'm writing.
So I tend to write late at night when other people have gone to bed and the house is quietand that works for me.
(19:07):
Yeah, yeah, nice.
So you've published over a thousand books.
Can you tell us about some of the journeys that have most touched you?
Yes, I can.
One of the journeys that I always loved talking about and really did move me was a mancalled Mark Escott, who wrote a book called One More Life Chance.
(19:36):
He was on a programme I did, I don't know if you know the Key Person of Influenceprogramme.
that Daniel Priestley runs, but I used to, in the old days, before COVID, I used to kindof teach this writing process, well, the planning process, particularly, to huge groups of
entrepreneurs, like 60 entrepreneurs in a room.
(19:57):
And I was kind of going through the process and, you know, talking, telling them how, youknow, it was feasible to do.
And this man stood up suddenly and said, I think I can write a book.
And I was sort of like, well, good, I hope you can.
But then he told his story, which was that he had been a child with a very, very difficultbackground.
(20:21):
He had been in care, he'd been chucked out of schools, he had uh ended up in probation.
um And he discovered when he was on probation that he uh was incredibly dyslexic.
He could not understand writing and reading.
So, you know, that was one of the reasons why he'd had such difficulty in school.
(20:44):
So he never thought he could write anything, particularly a book.
But I explained to him, we also have a ghost writing service.
And normally that is completely confidential.
We wouldn't I would never tell anybody that, you know, a certain writer had used that.
But for Mark, this is part of his story.
So I have complete freedom to talk about it because he does.
(21:06):
And um
he realized that by talking through his book with one of our experts, he would be able toget his content out of his head.
We would provide the professional writing for him and then he would be able to publish hisbook.
So, and that was like a kind of revelation to him.
(21:27):
So he did that, he published his book, he has this wonderful um
em organisation, charity called also called One More Life Chance.
When it is four, the whole point it is four young people like he was um and it providesspecialists kind of training and mentoring and that sort of thing.
And one of his piece of book magic was that he was on a train coming back from a trainingworkshop and a woman started talking to him on the train and he gave her a copy of his
(21:55):
book as you do when you've got books out when you're an author.
uh
Two weeks later, she called him, she was his MP.
She read his book and said, I want to help.
I want to help you get this, you know, one more life chance going.
And she, you know, that was the piece of magic, something that really helped him build hisbusiness.
(22:16):
So that's one of my favorite stories.
that's beautiful, isn't it?
And the fact that you were able to bring different mediums to get that story out.
think you've published, I'm sure you've published half the books on my bookshelf.
I'd like to think so.
uh Did you publish the one with David Broach?
(22:40):
Yes, yes, yes, his, his management.
Yes, exactly.
Yes, we did publish that.
Yeah.
No, David's fantastic.
He, he wrote a wonderful book.
um And it was, it was very nice.
of using it as a business card, isn't he?
Yes, yes.
No, he's great.
And it was very, you know, was really happy to publish David's book because he, you know,he is immensely experienced in the publishing industry himself.
(23:07):
So choosing us was very flattering for us as well.
And yeah.
Yeah.
So what are the don't do's?
So the don't do's are, well, don't do all the things I've, you know, don't not plan, don'tnot position your book, there are those.
(23:27):
um But then there are also, I would say, don't work alone.
If you're a first time author, don't think that um writing a book is that, I think we havethis kind of...
mental image of a writer as a creative person sitting in their sort of cold garret withscratching away with their quill pen or even, you know, typing on their keyboard.
(23:50):
But it's, know, it's something you have to do on your own.
And that is really part of a recipe for not getting a book finished because you gothrough, as you well know, every book you write is an emotional journey as well as an
intellectual journey.
And, you know, I've because I've gone through the process with so many entrepreneurs andI've sat on Zoom calls, weekly Zoom calls where people have come and, you know, fed back
(24:16):
and told me their problems and where they're up to and what's happening.
I know that when you start writing, you can often be on quite a high, you know, the firstbits of your book come out quite easily.
And then you suddenly get to a stage where you're a bit, you know, this is a bit harderthan I thought it would be.
It's quite tough.
And then you kind of
go into a, my goodness, this is rubbish.
(24:37):
know that, you know, nobody's who's going to read this book.
It's so boring.
Everybody knows this stuff.
I'm not saying anything new.
And the important thing to do there is not to give in to those emotions.
They are not reality.
It's not you.
It's not your book.
Everybody goes through this cycle, this pattern.
And if you push through, by the time you're about two thirds of the way through your firstdraft,
(25:03):
you suddenly start to think, oh, gosh, I've written 20,000 words.
This is, you know, I mean, I always do say, don't look at your first draft until youfinished it.
Don't edit, don't go back and forth, just get it out of your head.
That's one of my, you know, don't do, do not edit while you're writing your first draft.
But if you just keep going, push on through, don't succumb to your emotions of, you know,this is no good, I can't write a book, it's all, it's all rubbish stuff.
(25:31):
push on through, you will get to the end of your first draft and you will see that you'vewritten 35, 40,000 words and wow, there's some really good stuff in there.
And then you can go and edit it and look through it and make it, revise it so you've got abetter second draft.
(25:53):
And I think one of the things not to do is aim for perfection.
in your first draft because that's not what it's about.
Nobody needs to see your first draft except you.
It's, know, you're not needing to show that to anybody else.
So rough is rough.
And if I may say so, Ernest Hemingway said all first drafts are shit.
(26:16):
So Ernest Hemingway said that, I think that's the gold standard really.
That's what you're aiming for.
Do you know, I really get the planet, but also one of the things I do is I write it andthen when I think it's okay, I print it out on paper and I cut it up with scissors and I
(26:38):
have colored pens and number each bit.
And usually most of the bits end up in the book, but none of them end up anywhere near thebits that they ended up when I was writing them.
That's really interesting, yeah!
then I have a traumatic pasting thing where I'm sticking it all together with sticky tapeso that I've got a sort of shape of a page and a kind of order.
(27:04):
And what's really interesting is for me, and I know that's not what it says in your book,but for me, that is the magic moment where suddenly the book gets its shape in a way that
it may not have had its shape before.
I love that bit.
yes, that's really interesting that you use coloured strips because that's exactly what wedo in Book Magic, except we just do the coloured strips first.
(27:31):
So we divide the book into um topics, which are white strips.
We have stories, which are blue strips, and usually are case studies, which I think arereally important in a book.
anecdotes from your own journey, whether that's your personal life or your businessjourney, your learning.
And then green strips, which are sort of data points, if you like, or references, or uhresearch that supports sort of, I think of the blue ones, the stories as illustrating your
(28:05):
hard topics, the green ones as supporting them.
And then, you know, we start off by getting those out of your head into any
shape, form, whatever, and then dividing them into pink um kind of headings, which are thechapter headings, and creating the journey.
And then possibly you might have a top layer of yellow ones, which is like maybe part one,part two, and part three, where you group your chapters, if your book falls into that kind
(28:32):
of um format.
But yeah, it's really interesting that, you know, we both use kind of colors to divide thebook into its component parts and
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And then it finds itself and then I find it easier to, so I do that twice.
I do the printout twice.
(28:53):
And there's a second iteration where I go, that's completely in the wrong chapter.
And in fact, for the human behind the coach, I said to Lucia at one moment, this chapter'sin the wrong book.
Yes, that can absolutely happen.
Yeah, I mean, nothing's wasted.
Whatever you write, nothing wasted.
It'll go somewhere else.
(29:13):
ah But it might not be right for that particular book.
You're absolutely yeah, that's absolutely spot on.
But I really do agree about uh printing out your book.
That's what I suggest you do when you finished your first draft, print it out, stop beingthe writer and become the reader.
and get some distance between you and that manuscript on screen because you're kind of ina symbiotic relationship with it and you can't really see the wood for the trees but if
(29:41):
you print it out, A, it's sort of more book-shaped, it has a kind of heft and you can seethat one chapter is three pages and another chapter is 10 pages and that's probably not
very good consistency-wise.
And you can, you you make distance between yourself and the content you read as a readerthen.
(30:02):
So I think you're absolutely right about the printing out and the reading.
Yeah.
My other learning is to always leave uh a month between finishing what I think I'm goingto submit to you and actually submitting.
Yeah, is a very good, yes, I think that is a good idea.
(30:23):
Absolutely.
I mean, I wouldn't necessarily say a month, it depends what kind of hurry you're in orwhat your schedule is.
But I definitely think that taking time between different phases allows you to processand, you know, kind of, and I always say, don't think about it actively.
(30:45):
let your subconscious deal with it and you know actually actively stop thinking about itgive it you know however long you want to give it and then come back and you know it will
just it will be there you don't have to do that work yourself in a way
thank you, Lucy.
And lovely listeners, the book's called Book Magic by Lucy McCarraher.
(31:08):
And how do they contact you if they want to contact you, Lucy?
If you want to contact me, I think the best place is probably to find me on LinkedIn.
There's nobody else with my name.
That's the one, the one good thing about having such a crazy name.
But also if you want to go and look at Bookmagic, it's just bookmagic.ai.
Or if you want your book published, it's rethinkpress.com.
(31:31):
And uh yeah, book a call, go and have a play with the with the app, see whatever you know,see if one of those suits you.
Great, well thank you Lucy for coming to the Coaching In.
uh Thank you everyone for listening.
If you're in Europe, you've got the summer ahead of you.
In fact, if you've got the Northern Hemisphere, you've got the summer ahead of you.
(31:51):
So if you're going to be writing a book this summer, let us know.
And we'll see you on the next episode.
Bye bye.
Thank you, Lucy.
Oh, thank you,
Hello and welcome to this week's edition of The Coaching Inn, which building from lastweek is another take on book writing.
uh So I'm excited to have uh a publisher, Lucy McCarraher and she's gonna be talking aboutall things books.
First of all, do remember to subscribe or follow to be able to get access to every episodeas it drops and check out our sub stack.
(00:43):
inside the coaching in for all kinds of behind the scenes thinking out loud and stuff.
Lucy, hello, welcome.
Hello, Claire.
Thank you so much for inviting me today.
a real pleasure.
So publishing, my hot favourite topic at the moment, tell us what got you into thispublishing business Lucy.
(01:07):
it was a kind of long and circuitous route.
Now I started off in publishing, I started off in magazine publishing a very long time agowhen I started my first business.
And then I sort of in and out of it, I've worked for various publishers.
And then I came back into publishing after various other iterations of my life.
About 14 years ago, when I joined Joe Gregory, my business partner in his then publishingcompany,
(01:36):
that was called Bookshaker and he had started a company that specifically catered to thebooks of entrepreneurs, coaches, consultants, business leaders.
And it was a traditional business model business.
I thought that with the, mean, obviously, you know how publishing works in terms of abusiness model, traditional publishers invest in the book and make their return on their
(02:01):
investment from
sales, trade sales, mostly of books and sales to authors, but it's all about sellingcopies of books.
The authors that we were publishing there were not necessarily that interested in makingloads of trade sales, they were writing books to build their businesses.
And that would usually involve giving away lots of copies to prospects clients using theirbook as essentially a marketing tool.
(02:31):
So I suggested that we start a new venture, we trial something that wasn't really evencalled hybrid publishing at the time, where there was a different business model.
The authors paid for the production of their book.
And then there wasn't that pressure on either the author or the publisher to make lots oftrade sales in order to make their money back.
(02:52):
So we sort of tentatively tried that and thought, you know, well, you know, it may work orit may not.
actually it worked incredibly well and uh entrepreneur authors were only too happy to seethis as a marketing investment and uh not just to you know sort of publish a book because
(03:13):
it was just the thing to do but because they had something really valuable to say theywanted a really well-produced book a professional book out there on the you know
distribution channels as well as Amazon that a professional publisher can access.
and help with promoting their book, using their book as that lead generator, as thataccess to visibility, speaking gigs, podcast interviews, all that sort of thing.
(03:43):
And just raising their influence and being the authority in their field.
So we started that 14 years ago and we're now the biggest UK hybrid publisher of businessbooks.
um And we publish 70 odd books a year.
We've published over a thousand entrepreneur authors and their books are doingfantastically well for their businesses.
(04:06):
So um that's the story.
Yeah, it's amazing, isn't it?
it's, you know, historically, that's not that long ago.
I can remember eh meeting a friend of mine who was a publisher of business books forHarperCollins around that time.
And I was saying to him, how do I get a publisher for a book that I've kind of got in mymind?
(04:32):
And he said, you want to go with self-publishing and get a professional designer to designthe cover.
Yep.
And of course, what hybrid publishing has done is it's really sitting beautifully in thatmiddle space.
I love it.
I love hybrid publishing.
hear.
Yes, I mean, think, of course, know, some, I mean, essentially, traditional publishers arelooking for authors that sell books, while we are looking at books that sell authors.
(05:03):
and, and, you know, at the other end of the scale is as you exactly as you say, the selfpublishing option.
And the trouble is most authors, especially if they're doing it for the first time, theydon't know what they don't know.
And you know, the nuts and bolts, the engine of publishing is much more complicated thanpeople tend to think it is and it's going to.
(05:26):
And also when you're when you're putting together the production of your book, so you dohave to involve professionals.
So self publishing is really a misnomer, because you cannot publish a book on your own, atleast not and get a decent outcome.
So you have to find the right editor, as you say, the right cover designer, the rightinterior designer and proofreader and all the other members of the team.
(05:50):
And again, know, project managing those, if you haven't done it before is kind of like,you know, can be like herding cats.
You don't know what quality of, of, people you're getting sometimes.
And so, you know, it's just makes so much sense to go with a publishing company who hasthat team and that experience.
And yeah, that's why we think it works very well for our authors.
(06:13):
Yeah, definitely.
And you've just written a book called Book Magic.
I have, yes, indeed.
So tell us about book magic Lucy.
Okay, I will tell you about book magic.
Can I hold up a copy uh of the cover?
Oh, wonderful.
Thank you, Claire.
So book magic is a term that I've been using for the last sort of 10 years or so about theoutcomes that authors get when they publish their book.
(06:41):
And I say, you know, there are certain things you can clearly expect and are prettypredictable.
But then there's always something that happens or several things that happen as a resultof publishing your book.
I can't predict, you can't predict, but they feel like magic.
So I call I've called that book magic.
We also uh have developed at Rethink Press, and I think we're unique in doing that, thisuh a because we realized that our authors are entrepreneur authors are experts in their
(07:09):
field, but not necessarily experts or certainly professional writers.
So we developed a process for positioning, planning and writing books.
that I've taken literally over 2,000 authors through to get their books written.
And we built up a coaching team, we have a fantastic coaching team who do this on aone-to-one basis.
(07:34):
But also last year we launched an app um called Bookmagic AI, which is an app for tape,the whole process has gone into that app.
So you can now subscribe to Bookmagic and get all that coaching and mentoring.
experienced go through the processes that we've developed, the step-by-step processes ofwriting your book.
(07:58):
um And it's, you know, it's available, it's just very inclusive, it's very available toeveryone.
It's cheaper, I have to say, than, you know, paying a coach to help you.
And in some ways, I mean, I think I'm really a pretty good book mentor after all theseyears.
But I would say that probably the app
does it better than me because it's there 24 seven.
(08:21):
uh never, you know, the program never ends.
It's with you until you finish and you can ask it all sorts of questions night or day.
And you know, the AI, I have to say the AI is not there to write the book for you.
That's a really important point that we make.
You must write your own book.
AI generated content is not okay in a published book.
(08:44):
It's great for lots of things like um
articles, blog posts, social media posts, all sorts of stuff, but not for a published bookfor copyright reasons and other reasons.
So the AI we've introduced into the book Magic App is wonderfully helpful in helping youposition to your ideal client avatar, to get structure for your book, to get ideas for
(09:07):
topics, you can ask it questions as if it were your ideal client.
So, you know, I'm writing about this topic, what else would you like to know?
And it's so smart.
It's very, very clever.
So, that's so book magic.
My book is the sort of companion in a way.
I mean, you can use it completely on its own.
You don't have to use the app, but basically it is the final iteration, I think, of myprocess of taking people through writing the book that will build their business.
(09:38):
uh And you can use it as, uh as, as a sort of companion to the app as well.
Oh, interesting.
So what are your top tips?
Because lots of our listeners, know, lots of our listeners really believe they have bookin them.
So what would your top tips be for them?
Okay, so my top tips are, well, one of my top tips is do it.
(10:00):
Because I think a lot of people have, you know, this great idea for a book.
mean, essentially, your book, the book that builds your business is you is what you do.
It's how you take your clients through the journey, whatever, whoever your clients are,it's how you take them from their pain to your promise.
And that is the content of your book.
(10:21):
So don't worry.
that you haven't got some unique, original, extraordinary idea for your book that loadsand loads of people are going to read.
That's not what your book is there for.
You don't have to write some extraordinary bestseller.
You have to write a book that talks directly to your own clients, your own market.
(10:42):
So don't worry.
Everything you need to write about is in your head.
It's your experience.
You know it already.
So have that confidence.
People don't always position their book to their market.
mean, for example, people think, oh, I'll write a book for everybody who can't afford myservices.
(11:03):
That's very generous of you, but it's not going to build your business because you need totalk to the clients who can afford your services.
You tell them all about you and your business as a matter, simply as a matter of value,not in a salesy way in your book.
and then they are drawn back to work with you and to buy your higher price services.
(11:27):
That's how you get the return on your investment.
So positioning is important.
The other tip is to plan in detail before you start writing.
Don't just plunge into the writing with this idea that, know, writing is a wonderfulcreative activity.
You'll get in the flow and it will all fall out of your head onto the page in the rightorder.
(11:49):
Usually it doesn't.
and that's where people get stuck.
They might kind of have a few chapter headings and think, I know what I'm talking about.
I'll just write it.
It'll all happen.
And usually a couple of chapters in, go, oh, I'm overwhelmed.
What do I do now?
I've got writer's block or I don't know what comes next.
What should I?
So the really kind of key thing is to plan in detail your book before you start writing sothat essentially you have a full, full detail contents page
(12:20):
then all you're doing is kind of filling in the gaps as you write and those are mine.
you, I am the person you're telling, don't do that.
okay, I'm sorry.
Oh dear.
Well, yeah, well, well, yeah, no, it's, it's, yeah, planning is, planning is really keyand it makes the writing so much easier.
(12:45):
I mean, I don't, you know, I don't want to sort of tell you what you should be doing, but,but that's what Bookmagic is really helpful with.
You go into the app and it takes you through this process.
and it has a great kind of planning process so that, you know, it tells you what you needto, where you need to start, how you need to organize your ideas and get them into the
(13:09):
right structure.
And then you go off on the writing process, which again is not just a big amorphous kindof project that has all sorts of bits in it, like researching and editing and proofreading
and check.
It actually is a step-by-step process.
and if you follow the process you don't get overwhelmed.
(13:31):
You never need to get writer's block if you've done your planning rigorously enough tobegin with um and you know it's sort of it can be overwhelming so if you take it in
manageable chunks you are going to get through the process step by step and you know youkind of come out the other end and you think oh I've written
(13:51):
30,000 words, I've got a book here, that's fantastic.
So those are my tips, I think.
think planning is a good idea and it doesn't work for me.
What have you tried Bookmagic?
Have you tried the app?
Because
and I'm far enough through the next book to, it's just found itself.
(14:14):
And I guess, I guess there's a difference, isn't there, between a first time author?
I've written quite a few books now.
And I think what I've learned for myself is that I just dump streams of consciousness indocuments, and then slowly over time work out what the book's about, and then what the
flow needs to be.
(14:35):
And
what just happened with the new book is that we got the chapter titles and now thecontents of those documents don't necessarily fit with the chapter titles but we've
suddenly unlocked it and now we've unlocked it the book writing from now on is quitequick.
Yeah, that's great.
That's great.
Yeah, I mean, I think everybody does have their own way of doing things and certainly bookmagic is particularly useful if you are a first time author, writer.
(15:06):
But having said that, I've written 14 books and I thought I must use the app to write mynext book, to write book magic.
And I did, and I was amazed that it made it so much easier and quicker.
And actually the process was really creative.
was like working, you know, with a friend, with a coach, with, you know, somebody who wasworking with me.
(15:28):
So all the...
and Bookmagic, I hope you went on a writing retreat together, you and the app.
Well, a writing retreat in my office, yes!
the great believer in writing retreats.
Oh, right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, I think one of the problems too is, is of writing a book when you're runninga business is finding the time to do it.
(15:51):
And yes, for some people, think writing retreats and getting it all, you know, having asustained period of time when you write is really good.
For other people, taking it on us again, a sort of step by step basis is good forprocessing.
If you haven't got it all there in your head.
then one of the writing habits that I've found works with an awful lot of people, I itdoesn't work for me either, particularly, but is to steal an hour a day out of your day.
(16:21):
You know, like get up an hour earlier, don't look at your email, don't do anything, justwrite for an hour.
You can get a thousand words out in an hour.
um
and then leave it, come back the next day and in 30 days, 30 to five days or whatever,you've got your first draft written.
Yeah.
(16:42):
Yeah, I did one where I got up every morning at six o'clock and did three hours.
That was one book.
Another book.
Yeah, I did actually.
Another one I did uh after work whenever I was traveling, if I'd finished delivery and Iwas delivering stuff that was kind of forming the content of the book at the end of
(17:04):
delivery.
If I was on a residential, I would go and
get an alcohol-free beer and I would sit for two hours in a pub in a quiet corner and kindof flow it out that way.
You know, it's...
I have, and now I'm trying Fridays really unsuccessfully, but anyway...
(17:26):
Brilliant.
there's always other work that needs to be done at the moment.
Yeah.
At the moment it's shouting, right, right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, but I think, you know, it's important while you're writing your book to form ahabit.
It doesn't matter which of those habits it is, but get into a habit while you're writing.
(17:49):
And it will again, you know, if you particularly if you can do things like go to the sameplace every time use the same, you know, really silly things like have the same mug with
the same drink in it.
uh If you're somebody who use it, who has music on in the background.
use the same track, just use those triggers where your brain goes, aha, writing time,let's go and you
(18:11):
so simplifying coaching was written in uh pubs and coffee shops.
And then just as it was being submitted to the publisher, like two weeks before when I wasdoing all the tidying up stuff, COVID hit.
No coffee shops.
No!
No, what did you do?
Well, a coach, he's been a guest here actually, a coach called Sam Isaacson told me aboutMyNoise.net, which is a, which is an app that generates white noise and it generates the
(18:41):
sound of a coffee shop and boom, off I went.
And I, I, when I'm writing at home, I still write with that in the background.
It's really interesting how different people's brains kind of, you know, respond todifferent stimuli, isn't it?
I mean, I like, I like silence when I'm writing.
So I tend to write late at night when other people have gone to bed and the house is quietand that works for me.
(19:07):
Yeah, yeah, nice.
So you've published over a thousand books.
Can you tell us about some of the journeys that have most touched you?
Yes, I can.
One of the journeys that I always loved talking about and really did move me was a mancalled Mark Escott, who wrote a book called One More Life Chance.
(19:36):
He was on a programme I did, I don't know if you know the Key Person of Influenceprogramme.
that Daniel Priestley runs, but I used to, in the old days, before COVID, I used to kindof teach this writing process, well, the planning process, particularly, to huge groups of
entrepreneurs, like 60 entrepreneurs in a room.
(19:57):
And I was kind of going through the process and, you know, talking, telling them how, youknow, it was feasible to do.
And this man stood up suddenly and said, I think I can write a book.
And I was sort of like, well, good, I hope you can.
But then he told his story, which was that he had been a child with a very, very difficultbackground.
(20:21):
He had been in care, he'd been chucked out of schools, he had uh ended up in probation.
um And he discovered when he was on probation that he uh was incredibly dyslexic.
He could not understand writing and reading.
So, you know, that was one of the reasons why he'd had such difficulty in school.
(20:44):
So he never thought he could write anything, particularly a book.
But I explained to him, we also have a ghost writing service.
And normally that is completely confidential.
We wouldn't I would never tell anybody that, you know, a certain writer had used that.
But for Mark, this is part of his story.
So I have complete freedom to talk about it because he does.
(21:06):
And um
he realized that by talking through his book with one of our experts, he would be able toget his content out of his head.
We would provide the professional writing for him and then he would be able to publish hisbook.
So, and that was like a kind of revelation to him.
(21:27):
So he did that, he published his book, he has this wonderful um
em organisation, charity called also called One More Life Chance.
When it is four, the whole point it is four young people like he was um and it providesspecialists kind of training and mentoring and that sort of thing.
And one of his piece of book magic was that he was on a train coming back from a trainingworkshop and a woman started talking to him on the train and he gave her a copy of his
(21:55):
book as you do when you've got books out when you're an author.
uh
Two weeks later, she called him, she was his MP.
She read his book and said, I want to help.
I want to help you get this, you know, one more life chance going.
And she, you know, that was the piece of magic, something that really helped him build hisbusiness.
(22:16):
So that's one of my favorite stories.
that's beautiful, isn't it?
And the fact that you were able to bring different mediums to get that story out.
think you've published, I'm sure you've published half the books on my bookshelf.
I'd like to think so.
uh Did you publish the one with David Broach?
(22:40):
Yes, yes, yes, his, his management.
Yes, exactly.
Yes, we did publish that.
Yeah.
No, David's fantastic.
He, he wrote a wonderful book.
um And it was, it was very nice.
of using it as a business card, isn't he?
Yes, yes.
No, he's great.
And it was very, you know, was really happy to publish David's book because he, you know,he is immensely experienced in the publishing industry himself.
(23:07):
So choosing us was very flattering for us as well.
And yeah.
Yeah.
So what are the don't do's?
So the don't do's are, well, don't do all the things I've, you know, don't not plan, don'tnot position your book, there are those.
(23:27):
um But then there are also, I would say, don't work alone.
If you're a first time author, don't think that um writing a book is that, I think we havethis kind of...
mental image of a writer as a creative person sitting in their sort of cold garret withscratching away with their quill pen or even, you know, typing on their keyboard.
(23:50):
But it's, know, it's something you have to do on your own.
And that is really part of a recipe for not getting a book finished because you gothrough, as you well know, every book you write is an emotional journey as well as an
intellectual journey.
And, you know, I've because I've gone through the process with so many entrepreneurs andI've sat on Zoom calls, weekly Zoom calls where people have come and, you know, fed back
(24:16):
and told me their problems and where they're up to and what's happening.
I know that when you start writing, you can often be on quite a high, you know, the firstbits of your book come out quite easily.
And then you suddenly get to a stage where you're a bit, you know, this is a bit harderthan I thought it would be.
It's quite tough.
And then you kind of
go into a, my goodness, this is rubbish.
(24:37):
know that, you know, nobody's who's going to read this book.
It's so boring.
Everybody knows this stuff.
I'm not saying anything new.
And the important thing to do there is not to give in to those emotions.
They are not reality.
It's not you.
It's not your book.
Everybody goes through this cycle, this pattern.
And if you push through, by the time you're about two thirds of the way through your firstdraft,
(25:03):
you suddenly start to think, oh, gosh, I've written 20,000 words.
This is, you know, I mean, I always do say, don't look at your first draft until youfinished it.
Don't edit, don't go back and forth, just get it out of your head.
That's one of my, you know, don't do, do not edit while you're writing your first draft.
But if you just keep going, push on through, don't succumb to your emotions of, you know,this is no good, I can't write a book, it's all, it's all rubbish stuff.
(25:31):
push on through, you will get to the end of your first draft and you will see that you'vewritten 35, 40,000 words and wow, there's some really good stuff in there.
And then you can go and edit it and look through it and make it, revise it so you've got abetter second draft.
(25:53):
And I think one of the things not to do is aim for perfection.
in your first draft because that's not what it's about.
Nobody needs to see your first draft except you.
It's, know, you're not needing to show that to anybody else.
So rough is rough.
And if I may say so, Ernest Hemingway said all first drafts are shit.
(26:16):
So Ernest Hemingway said that, I think that's the gold standard really.
That's what you're aiming for.
Do you know, I really get the planet, but also one of the things I do is I write it andthen when I think it's okay, I print it out on paper and I cut it up with scissors and I
(26:38):
have colored pens and number each bit.
And usually most of the bits end up in the book, but none of them end up anywhere near thebits that they ended up when I was writing them.
That's really interesting, yeah!
then I have a traumatic pasting thing where I'm sticking it all together with sticky tapeso that I've got a sort of shape of a page and a kind of order.
(27:04):
And what's really interesting is for me, and I know that's not what it says in your book,but for me, that is the magic moment where suddenly the book gets its shape in a way that
it may not have had its shape before.
I love that bit.
yes, that's really interesting that you use coloured strips because that's exactly what wedo in Book Magic, except we just do the coloured strips first.
(27:31):
So we divide the book into um topics, which are white strips.
We have stories, which are blue strips, and usually are case studies, which I think arereally important in a book.
anecdotes from your own journey, whether that's your personal life or your businessjourney, your learning.
And then green strips, which are sort of data points, if you like, or references, or uhresearch that supports sort of, I think of the blue ones, the stories as illustrating your
(28:05):
hard topics, the green ones as supporting them.
And then, you know, we start off by getting those out of your head into any
shape, form, whatever, and then dividing them into pink um kind of headings, which are thechapter headings, and creating the journey.
And then possibly you might have a top layer of yellow ones, which is like maybe part one,part two, and part three, where you group your chapters, if your book falls into that kind
(28:32):
of um format.
But yeah, it's really interesting that, you know, we both use kind of colors to divide thebook into its component parts and
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And then it finds itself and then I find it easier to, so I do that twice.
I do the printout twice.
(28:53):
And there's a second iteration where I go, that's completely in the wrong chapter.
And in fact, for the human behind the coach, I said to Lucia at one moment, this chapter'sin the wrong book.
Yes, that can absolutely happen.
Yeah, I mean, nothing's wasted.
Whatever you write, nothing wasted.
It'll go somewhere else.
(29:13):
ah But it might not be right for that particular book.
You're absolutely yeah, that's absolutely spot on.
But I really do agree about uh printing out your book.
That's what I suggest you do when you finished your first draft, print it out, stop beingthe writer and become the reader.
and get some distance between you and that manuscript on screen because you're kind of ina symbiotic relationship with it and you can't really see the wood for the trees but if
(29:41):
you print it out, A, it's sort of more book-shaped, it has a kind of heft and you can seethat one chapter is three pages and another chapter is 10 pages and that's probably not
very good consistency-wise.
And you can, you you make distance between yourself and the content you read as a readerthen.
(30:02):
So I think you're absolutely right about the printing out and the reading.
Yeah.
My other learning is to always leave uh a month between finishing what I think I'm goingto submit to you and actually submitting.
Yeah, is a very good, yes, I think that is a good idea.
(30:23):
Absolutely.
I mean, I wouldn't necessarily say a month, it depends what kind of hurry you're in orwhat your schedule is.
But I definitely think that taking time between different phases allows you to processand, you know, kind of, and I always say, don't think about it actively.
(30:45):
let your subconscious deal with it and you know actually actively stop thinking about itgive it you know however long you want to give it and then come back and you know it will
just it will be there you don't have to do that work yourself in a way
thank you, Lucy.
And lovely listeners, the book's called Book Magic by Lucy McCarraher.
(31:08):
And how do they contact you if they want to contact you, Lucy?
If you want to contact me, I think the best place is probably to find me on LinkedIn.
There's nobody else with my name.
That's the one, the one good thing about having such a crazy name.
But also if you want to go and look at Bookmagic, it's just bookmagic.ai.
Or if you want your book published, it's rethinkpress.com.
(31:31):
And uh yeah, book a call, go and have a play with the with the app, see whatever you know,see if one of those suits you.
Great, well thank you Lucy for coming to the Coaching In.
uh Thank you everyone for listening.
If you're in Europe, you've got the summer ahead of you.
In fact, if you've got the Northern Hemisphere, you've got the summer ahead of you.
(31:51):
So if you're going to be writing a book this summer, let us know.
And we'll see you on the next episode.
Bye bye.
Thank you, Lucy.
Oh, thank you,
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