How to Find Book Coaching Clients: Part One
The biggest mistake new book coaches make is thinking that they will be serving “writers.”
Are they new writers? Seasoned writers? Academic writers? Business writers? Writers looking to publish one book? Or a series? Writers looking to earn a full-time living from their writing? Or just finally do this thing that they have always said they wanted to do?
You have to choose and then you have to keep choosing.
So let’s say, yes: writers who are looking to publish their first book. Great. There are so many of these kinds of writers in the world. It’s a great market for a book coach who loves helping people make the leap of faith and loves teaching the basics of narrative design and the lessons of craft. But who exactly is your ideal client?
Retirees who finally have the time and headspace to do it? MFA students who didn’t get the training they need to approach the marketplace? Moms who have such a hard time finding the time to spend in their own head with their own ideas, but who also suspect this can be their salvation?
Perhaps it’s the moms. Great. This is becoming more clear. Now you have to keep digging. What exactly are they writing? Memoir? Historical fiction? Romance in the style of Colleen Hoover? YA?
Let’s say you can’t choose because you love romance in the style of Colleen Hoover but you also love speculative fiction about utopian worlds and lately you have been reading a ton of historical fiction and time-travel novels. This is fine, as long as you choose in another way, which is what kind of help this mom writer needs. What ties together all these writers you will be serving?
Do they need help starting? Or finishing? Or revising? Do they need help knowing their point and their purpose? Is it that they keep getting rejected because people can’t relate to their protagonist? Have they gone to 47 writing conferences, received inquiries from 27 agents, and still haven’t found the courage to pitch their work?
The Power of Saying No
The point is that you have to think about who your clients are as people and as writers. You have to know who they are on an emotional level, a creative level, an intellectual level, an entrepreneurial level. All the levels.
This is WAY easier said than done because it is about saying no, and many new coaches don’t want to close the door on anyone.
The problem with not choosing is that not choosing is also a choice.
Not choosing is saying: I will help anyone who knocks on my door. I will help anyone who is willing to pay me. I will help anyone who believes I can help them.
Maybe this sounds generous, welcoming, and awesome to you. You shall help all the people!
But here’s what happens: Someone hears you are a book coach and hears that the person you helped in your practicum training landed an agent (this happens somewhat frequently!) and they wonder if you can help them. But the writer you helped in your practicum training was an entrepreneur who was writing a book about the micro-farm movement in which neighbors grow and share fresh herbs with neighbors instead of buying the kind packaged in plastic clamshells. Your practicum training was in nonfiction, and you are super jazzed about helping other entrepreneurs who are running climate-sustaining businesses write books to help spread their mission and grow their client base. You feel that this is the way you can make an impact on climate change. And the writer coming to you wants to write about living next door to the Unabomber.
The book about the Unabomber is a great idea (it actually is a book written by a writer who worked with one of our coaches) and you know you can help this person. You know you can help them understand their point and their structure, their audience, and their marketplace position. So you say YES! I can help.
But you realize that the process you used to help the micro farmer doesn’t work for the Unabomber neighbor. The micro farmer was starting from zero on a book proposal and the Unabomber neighbor has 120 pages of a manuscript written — and is that manuscript holding together? Is it good? Is the writer stuck? You are in a whole new country speaking a different language and using a different currency.
Should you charge the same for helping this new person? Yes? No? Who knows?
If you repeat this for every client you work with, you are making up a customized service every time, which takes time and also prevents you from having any systems or processes that would make things more efficient and ease-ful for you and for your clients.
You might be saying. “I just paid a lot of money to be certified as a book coach and I need to earn my tuition back, and also I’d like to take my kids to see Taylor Swift. The Unabomber neighbor is happy to pay my fees and is ready to go right now? I can tweak my systems!”
And in this case, and some others, you absolutely can and maybe should. If it is critical to make money right now, take the job! Compromise in order to build your experience and build your muscle and build your business and make money. I did it. Lots of coaches do it. It’s fine.
For now.
But over time, you need to work towards the place of choosing. You have to get to the place where you can tell the Unabomber neighbor that you are not the perfect book coach for them but you know someone else who is.
You have to get to the place where you can say that you are the perfect book coach for mission-based climate-sustaining entrepreneurs who are writing books for the top of their client funnels and need help putting their passion into words.
Your Zone of Genius
The Magic in Choosing
What happens when you choose?
The Unabomber neighbor writer starts working with a book coach who specializes in memoir writing and they land an agent. The agent is so impressed with the book proposal and asks the writer what they did to get it into such good shape. The writer raves about their book coach. The agent says, Geez, I sure wish there was someone who specializes in mission-based climate-sustaining entrepreneurs because I have a client who is really struggling with their proposal and I don’t have the bandwidth to help her.
And you get a new client.
And the book coach who helped the Unabomber neighbor gets an inquiry from a business owner who isn’t really sure what they are writing yet but they want to write some kind of how-to book to help people understand how to find the money to invest in solar panels for their home. And this book coach sends them your way.
And six months later, someone in your networking group who is a website developer remembers you talking about how hard it was to turn the Unabomber neighbor away, and they have a new client whose bamboo toilet paper company is looking for innovative ways to market their business and they send them your way.
And you start posting on Instagram about the climate-sustaining businesses you are interested in and you start reviewing books in these areas. A climate activist responds to one of your reviews that the book you are talking about is her all-time favorite. You start chatting about other books. Turns out he has a podcast and invites you to come on the show to talk about book writing and you get 54 new followers on Instagram and 127 people opting into your newsletter (because you offered them something awesome — which we will get to next week.)
A year after saying no to the Unabomber neighbor writer, the book coach who makes intentional choices has a thriving business. They have a waiting list. They have raised their prices three times. They are launching an online course to help mission-based entrepreneurs work through the 8 steps of a book proposal.
I am making this up (based on some real-life insider info about mission-based business building), but this is what I have seen happen time and time again. Maybe it’s the power of attraction or The Secret or something about manifesting or some kind of string theory yet to be proven – I don’t know why it happens. I only know that it does.
A Real Story Unfolding
Here is the way one recently certified book coach drilled down into her ideal client.
On her Instagram when she started, this is what her bio said:
Helping inquisitive authors plan and write their stories so they can translate their ideas into reality!
This statement is filled with so much hope and generosity but it has the problems we have just discussed. It raised more questions than it answers:
If they are authors does that mean they are already published?
What are they inquisitive about?
By story, does that mean novel? Or memoir? Or could it be a nonfiction book?
And translate their ideas into reality – meaning what, exactly?
It would be very difficult to try to bring writers into this book coaching business. What do you do for them? What do they need? How can you connect with them? And where would you find them? Therein lies the trouble.
A few weeks ago in our internal community at Author Accelerator, Erin wrote this:
I watched the recording of the Aug 8th deep dive*, and I think it's time to niche down. I've been playing around with this language for my 'who I serve' statement, and would love any feedback: I help fiction writers who elevate nature in their writing because they feel, like I do, that the natural world deserves consideration in all that we do.
*sessions we do where we put individual coaches in the hot seat to help them refine their businesses at every stage of the process
Look how much more specific this statement is!
Now we know that it’s fiction writers.
Now we know that they have a certain belief about the natural world. I’m still not quite sure what the natural world means, but I can kind of see it.
Now we know that these writers want to elevate nature in their writing
Now we can begin to imagine how to serve this writer.
But of course, there is much more digging to do.
Community Response
Another certified coach responded to Erin with this very skillful inquiry. (Can you tell what a good book coach this person would be? Instead of saying, “What the heck are books that elevate nature?” they ask, “What are some examples of books that elevate nature?”
Hi Erin! (We're fellow Oregonians - I live in Portland.) I'm working on defining my niche, too. Out of curiosity, what are some examples of books that elevate nature? I know it wouldn't apply to the books I write, so your statement is effective in that regard 😁
Erin responded:
Howdy neighbor! I'm thinking of books like Wayward Creatures by Dayna Lorentz and Manatee Summer by Evan Griffith (both middle grade), and Weyward by Emilia Hart. And 'elevate' probably isn't the word I'm looking for, but books that celebrate or draw attention to nature.
After a bit of back and forth with some others, Erin wrote:
I think I'm going to sit with "I help fiction writers who want to give nature a voice through their writing" for a while. Short and sweet. Thanks everyone for the help!
Looking for more tips?
Stay tuned as next month’s blog post will be Part 2 in this series on How to Get Book Coaching Clients. We’ll look more closely at defining what your ideal clients need.
