The Business Impact of Writing a Book: Data, Analysis, and Lessons from Professional Service Providers Who Have Done It
By Mike Schultz, Andrea Rosal, John Doerr, and Rebecca Gould
RainToday.com, Framingham, MA, 2006
PDF download, 80 pages, $149
Reviewed by David M. Freedman

If you write a book, will it help you grow your book of business? The authors of this research report answer with a resounding yes.

The research was conducted and reported by three staffers at RainToday.com (www.raintoday.com) and one from the Wellesley Hills Group (www.whillsgroup.com), both having the same street address in Framingham, Mass. RainToday.com is a website that features "insight, advice, and tools for service business rainmakers, marketers, and leaders." Wellesley Hills is a marketing consultancy to service businesses.

From a survey of 200 professional advisers who wrote books that were published, the authors found that 97 percent of them believe that "publishing a business book affected their practice either 'positively' (49 percent) or 'extremely positively' (47 percent)."

The study also surveyed those authors about their publishing strategies (some were self-published, but most were published by mainstream houses); the specific benefits of being an author; the costs of writing, producing, and marketing their books; revenue from books sales compared with "indirect revenue" from the beneficial effects of being an author; and the best methods for promoting their books, among other topics.

Among the survey respondents, 5 percent came from the legal services sector, and 8 percent from accounting and financial services. The biggest group represented was management consultants (21 percent), followed by marketing, advertising and PR (17 percent). Other groups included information technology services; human resources consulting; architecture, engineering, and construction; and "other."

All together the 200 respondents wrote 590 books between 1974 and 2006.

The RainToday authors did not attempt to evaluate the merits or quality of any of those books or how well the publishers marketed and distributed the books.

Here is a small sampling of their conclusions:

Each section of the report features quotes from the survey respondents, and those are some the most informative parts of the report.

Caveats
The authors of the survey contacted about 750 book authors and got about a 25 percent response rate. It is possible that the book authors who felt most enthusiastic about the positive effect that their books had on their practices were the ones who responded to the survey; and the authors whose books did not help them grow their practices were less enthusiastic and didn't bother to respond. In that case, the respondents would be self-selecting and the conclusions skewed. But there is no doubt that for at least some professionals, writing a book was a powerful way to grow their practices.

Another caveat: The RainToday authors did not attempt to compare the positive effects of writing a book with the positive effects of doing other forms of marketing and promotion. In other words: You will spend a good deal of time writing and promoting a book. You could spend the same amount of time doing speaking engagements, teaching seminars, and playing golf with referral sources. What is the most cost-effective use of your time in terms of developing your practice? The authors did not attempt to determine whether writing a book is a more or less effective practice development strategy than any others. Ultimately, in my opinion, you should use the strategy that is the most enjoyable.