I sat in the bread shop in Kyoto, listening to the writer share about the progress of his interviews. He said he’d done more than 20 interviews, but he wasn’t too sure how much he could use because some of it was confidential information.
Then he threw in the kicker.
The management hasn’t approved what should go into the book.
Mentally, I did a facepalm.
They wanted this commemorative book by mid 2025, and it was already December 2024.
How was this possible?
If you’re looking to do a commemorative book, and you’re picking a writer or heck, even an agency to do it, here’s what you should not be looking out for.
hey, maybe there’s something here?
No, there’s nothing there.
Over the past 5 years of writing and producing books for ourselves, and other agencies, we’ve come to realise that a book is not like any other content piece.
A book is not any other content
If you’re doing a commemorative book, you want to celebrate the many years of achievements you’ve come through.
That will require a certain measure of gravitas.
And for that gravitas to come through, you need an agency that knows how to … wait for it, because it might not be something you expect.
The skill you’re looking for is structuring.
To structure many different pieces of content.
Look for an agency’s ability to structure data
Huh? Why does that even matter?
For your history to shine through, your agency will need to read into your history, understand your work, and put it together in a coherent narrative.
For example, in a commemorative book we pitched for Boustead’s 200th Anniversary, we had to dig into their archives, annual reports, and decide how best to shape their story.
As you can see here, a good bookwriting agency would come up with the concept based off what they see in your materials. They then build the core ideas.
But beyond the basic ability to concept and ideate, the more important part is for the agency to be able to project manage.
If you read the foreword of many authors, they start by telling you how difficult it was. George Yeo, the previous Foreign Minister of Singapore, wrote about how he initially thought the book might take a few months.
But he eventually took 3 years to finish it.
That’s why you need an agency that’s great at managing large projects like a book.
Track record in project management
Over the past year, we’ve been writing the memoir of a CEO. Following to his conference in Bangkok, sitting in his Porsche, and sitting in monthly interviews with him have helped us to see the enormity of the task of writing a book.
It’s not just the writing that matters.
Actually, there are countless other matters.
Each of the processes we’ve listed above doesn’t come about by chance. There are countless moving pieces involved.
For example, as an agency, we initially thought that it was just about writing a book.
But then we also realised that it was also getting institutional support for the book.
Building institutional support
For this book, we had to interview key members of their management team and get them to talk about sensitive issues, such as:
- Was the leader actually good?
- How were they earning more (or less) money under the CEO’s leadership?
- What were the CEO’s flaws?
None of these are easy questions, but with an agency who’s skilled at asking questions, you will find yourself being able to find a way into such sensitive questions.
Besides, you’re not just asking for them to think about the leader, but you’re asking for an invaluable resource they can never replace – time.
Agencies who can build that institutional support for your book is vital, because they are going to be spending time finding pictures, resources, and time for you to interview them. Your agency will need to be able to explain the purpose of the book in a way that makes sense.
After all, why would they want to spend the time they can spend on working with you?
And beyond that, during procedural, boring tasks like applying for the ISBN, getting the authors’ year of birth, all take time.
This requires skill.
Bringing a book from start to end is about discipline
After 5 years of writing, I’ve come to see that those who do manage to ship books, are those who have discipline.
A wicked amount of it.
How do you find that in the agency you choose?
See what they have done in the past, and ask questions like:
- How long did you take for this book?
- Why did it take this long?
And if you find the agency that can ship on time, on target, that’s the one you should keep choosing.