How to boost your business with a book

18 July 2013 by in Book publishing, Business and finance

The world of print has taken something of a pounding over the last few years. Just look at the newspaper industry and how it’s struggled to cope with the plethora of free news sites. E-book readers – especially Amazon’s Kindle – have changed the publishing landscape beyond recognition. A business model that has worked well for well over a hundred years has all but disintegrated.

We’ve blogged before about the huge changes in the world of publishing and like most publishers, we upload e-book editions of our books on all the major platforms. A digital book is indeed an important way to disseminate knowledge. But we’ve always been of the opinion that a physical printed book creates the most impact.

We’ve worked with established and new authors alike, bringing their books to market around the world, and over the years we’ve published a lot of books with business consultants. Our view has always been that a printed book offers a great way to promote a consulting business.

Business strategySo to test our theory we thought we’d do some research. We emailed some ten thousand consultants in the UK, identifying published authors and asking them if having a book had had a positive effect on their businesses. The answers we received made very interesting reading. They can be summarised thus:

  • Nearly 75% of respondents told us that they had written their book in order to promote their business;
  • 72% of respondents claimed that as a result of being published recognition of their business’ brand increased;
  • Nearly 60% claimed that they picked up more speaking events after being published;
  • 65% stated that being published gained them more clients.

That’s quite compelling, and it supports some of our own anecdotal evidence (one of our authors gained a six figure consulting role as a result of his book being bought at an airport bookshop, another ended up as a speaker at the World Economic Forum at Davos two years in succession).

A well published physical book is the best calling card a consultant can have. Books have a high perceived value and rarely get thrown away, so once they’ve been purchased by a reader, they tend to stay with the reader. A physical book without doubt establishes a consultant’s authority and can have a very positive effect on a business.

If you’d like more information, either on the survey results or getting into print with Infinite Ideas, do get in touch.