Every time I’m on a podcast (I was recently on The Shit No One Tells You About Writing and Dallas Travers’ Coaches on a Mission), I get asked how writers can find a book coach that is the right fit for them.

I love this question because it lets me go back to the fundamental concepts that are at the heart of a writer’s success. Before you can determine what book coach is a good fit, you have to ask yourself some hard questions:

Why do you want to write a book?

What are your goals?

What would you consider success?

What would you consider the opposite of success?

What resources are you bringing to the undertaking—resources that might include time, energy, skill, experience, determination, habits, a community of writers, an agent, an editor, a platform, money?

What areas do you need to improve to achieve your goals?

The Opposite of Wishful Thinking

All of these questions circle around the concept of writers being intentional about their writing goals and clear-headed about what it takes to achieve them rather than closing their eyes, crossing their fingers, and waiting to be picked.

Once they understand what they want and what it takes to get there, they can get to work, taking consistent, reliable actions towards their goals (a very James Clear path—I’m a fan!).

Those actions can be done in collaboration with a book coach, who is trained to guide book projects from beginning to end.

Book coaches can provide editorial feedback, accountability, emotional support, and marketplace intelligence so a writer can improve their skills, increase their confidence, and go after their goals.

So How Do You Find the Right Book Coach?

For the last few years, Author Accelerator has been hand-matching our certified coaches with writers who want to work with them (thanks Diana, Gates, and Margaret for doing all that matching!), and we were very committed to the hand-matching part.

I don’t like the mass directories because most writers don’t have a clue what they need and end up looking for arbitrary markers like the lowest price or the highest numbers of “bestsellers” that the coach has written themselves—as if those things indicate a good working relationship based around the writer’s needs. 

I may have said “We will never have a directory of coaches” on more than one occasion.

I have humbly changed my mind.

We finally found a way to create a directory that lets writers search on the kind of criteria that can make all the difference to their project. There are 13 criteria that range from coaching style to high/low touch (usually correlated with high/low price) and from genre to the kind of service they offer. 

If a writer is honest with themselves about what they want and need (tough love? Gentle guidance?) they will be able to find a coach, or several, who suit those needs, and they can explore those coaches’ websites.

Author Accelerator’s Searchable Book Coach Directory is Now Live

We have more than 160 certified coaches all over the world. They do everything from help writers understand the changing publishing landscape to guiding the revision of a thriller. They work with brand new novelists for whom English is a second language, academic writers whose goal is to write for the trade, kidlit writers, health and wellness writers, and everything in between.

If you need help getting past the first three chapters, writing an entire manuscript, figuring out why your book keeps getting rejected, or pitching your book to agents, you can find someone who is a great match.

Our Coaches Choose, Too

The reason our Searchable Coach Directory is so powerful is that on the other side divide, the coaches are choosing, too.

Part of what we teach our Author Accelerator certified book coaches is to narrow their niche—to choose who they love to work with and target their services to what those writers need. We want them to work in their Zone of Genius, because that’s where people do their best work. Every coach has a different one. 

So when you visit their websites, and book a discovery call, or a Mini Blueprint session, or some other service, the coach will be looking to see if you are a good fit for them. They want you to succeed. They want you to meet the goals you have set for your project. 

So they are choosing and you are choosing, and the result can be magic.

I recently spoke with certified book coach Jada Lightning about her process and how she found her niche. If you're curious to hear about how this process unfolds, you will love our conversation. Watch it here or by clicking the image below. Meanwhile, you can find our new searchable coach directory HERE or by clicking the button below.