A Business Card Book

David Dirks wrote an interesting article for the Times Herald-Record: The Big Dogz on Business: Share Your Expertise By Publishing a Book.

He makes some good points - whatever business you’re in, you probably have expertise you could share with others. If you have the discipline and organization to write a book in your area of expertise, you establish yourself as an expert.

The interesting point he made was that he advocates you think beyond selling your book on Amazon or at local venues. He says, give it away. Give it to potential clients, like a business card. By doing that, he says you become not just an expert, but an expert plus. You showcase your expertise and gain a business advantage.

That got me to thinking about his idea. By giving away your book, more people become aware of you and begin to view you as the expert in that area. When they need help or work in that area, they are more likely to turn to you. Organizations looking for speakers in that area are more likely to hear about you and ask you to speak or conduct a workshop. You not only become this expert-plus, you get more business.

But how to apply this to writers whose business is writing? Sure, you could do a book about writing, but you’ll need more than just a mystery/romance/sci-fi/whatever book published to back up your nonfiction book as an expert. How about writing a short book on an area that you had to do a lot of research on when you wrote that mystery/romance/so-on book?

Let’s say your book involves a quilter. You could write a book that has quilting stitches, a discussion of machine quilting vs. hand stitching, patterns, etc. Now, when you go to speak to quilters, you can give away your small book to the attendees and offer to sign each copy at the author table at the back of the room while you’re signing copies of your fiction book.

A lot of people will buy your fiction. Some won’t. But if they don’t, they still have your expert book, which, of course, lists your fiction title(s) with ISBN and your website URL in the back. They, in effect, have your business card that has enough valuable info in it not to end up in the trash and it might entice them to buy your book or future books.