My first bestseller paid in dog food
Not a figure of speech.
I was 15. Someone needed a book written, had more dog food than money, and asked if that would do. It did. The book went on to the NYT list, and I went on to feed the dogs.
That was 30 years ago, which I know because I’m 45 and the arithmetic is unforgiving. 3 more of those lists have happened since. The job hasn’t changed: somebody brilliant has a book in them and no earthly idea how to get it out, and I get it out.
I’ve done it for founders, CEOs, coaches, a hotelier, a nonprofit director, and a man who wrote his manuscript by hand from a prison cell. Business books, memoirs, thought leadership, the occasional beautiful mess that needed rescuing. Different rooms, same job.
One of my books got banned challenged
Best day of my careerI can’t tell you which one. I can tell you it got challenged, pulled off shelves in places, and argued about at length by people who hadn’t read it.
Here’s why I loved it. Every author I’ve worked with has a draft where they went quiet. The paragraph they sanded down. The chapter they made agreeable. They do it fast enough that they don’t notice doing it, and the book survives, and it’s a worse book.
A banned book is one nobody softened. Somebody wrote the true version and left it in. Getting people to leave it in is the whole job. 30 more years of this and I’d like a shelf of them.
Got a banned book in you?You might have a book coach in me.
I’m always on the lookout for stories that deserve a bigger shelf. Communities that get written about far more than they get read. Voices the mainstream hasn’t caught up to yet. If that’s you (or your people), you’re exactly who I want to write books with.
Tell me your story ✨
