ETL 37: Donya Dickerson on Thought Leadership Books

Transcript: Donya Dickerson and Bob Buday

Bob Buday:  Donya, it is great to have you on our show. Our first question is: You’ve been in the book publishing industry for more than 20 years, largely as an agent in the last year or so. What do you see as the key trends that are affecting people now today who want to be seen as thought leaders?

Donya Dickerson: That is such a great question. And as you pointed out, I am an agent at Aevitas Creative Management. That’s a new role for me, less than a year. But prior to that, I was at McGraw Hill for over 20 years, and at Writer’s Digest Books before that. At McGraw Hill, I ran the business list so I worked closely with thought leaders trying to understand how they can make the book a part of their thought leadership.

I’ve definitely seen major trends over the last 20 years. Probably the biggest is this idea of a thought leader as the content creator. I think that has mostly pros to go with it. But there’s a few downsides. As a content creator, your book is just part of your overall brand and content reach to your audience. What’s so exciting about that is you can use whatever platform your audience is on, whether it’s LinkedIn, which I think probably is [the case] for most thought leaders. Maybe it’s Instagram. Or newsletters.

There are a lot of other different ways that you can reach an audience to test your ideas, see what resonates, see what kind of questions people are asking, which could turn out to be a pain point you could address in a book. It’s a wonderful way to grow your audience.

You could do some initial research with your audience in terms of what a book might be about, or where you should go with the direction of your business. As a thought leader, that’s a wonderful thing. It’s also nice because if you do have a book or other products that you want to sell, you also have a way to reach your audience directly and sell to them directly.

The downside of that is twofold. It’s a noisy space now, and it’s hard to stand out. Thought leaders have to hone their brand and be authentic. They have to constantly think of ways to differentiate themselves from other people who are in the same space. Then they have to be consistent. That’s really hard when you have clients who need you right away, or book deadlines or other things going on. It can be [difficult] to constantly come up with new ideas and create new content.

One of the exciting things that we’ve seen over the last 20 years in the world of publishing is that the way that book content is delivered has really changed too: it’s the print book, it’s the ebook, it’s the audio book. Some people are figuring out ways to build courses out of their books. It’s figuring out how your audience wants you to deliver your content to them, and in multiple ways, so you can reach lots of different people.

Publishing Options for Thought Leaders

Bob: At McGraw Hill, you were involved the entire time in business and management books, right?

Donya: Yes. I was in the business team the entire time. I started out as a junior editor and then worked my way up to associate publisher, overseeing the whole [book title] list. And that category includes business, leadership, sales, entrepreneurship, investing, and real estate. It’s a very broad category.

There’s lots of opportunities for thought leaders in the business space. That’s actually another trend that’s happened over the past 20 years. Certainly, you can be a thought leader outside the world of business. You can be a thought leader on healthcare or parenting or many other topics.

Bob: Going back to the early 2000s when you got to McGraw Hill, to 2023 when you left, did you see an increase in unsolicited manuscripts coming your way, of people pitching you and the folks you managed?

Donya: I never really tracked it. But it was always a steady stream of proposals coming in. I always encouraged my team to be entrepreneurial. A lot of it is finding that discovered gem out there and bringing them in. That’s really important, too.

I definitely saw a rise in niche categories. That becomes harder for a bigger publisher to handle. As we started to get more niche proposals, they were the ones we were rejecting more. There were people who were reaching a very specific audience, publishing books and finding success that way.

Getting Published Today

Bob: It seems to me there are many more book publishing options today than there were 20 years ago for authors. Self-publishing has always been around. But hybrid publishing appears to really have taken off. So it would seem to me that the book publishers’ demand for books has increased — if you include the traditional publishers like McGraw Hill and Wiley and Penguin Portfolio, etc, and the hybrid publishers and self-publishing options. But has the quality of proposals and manuscripts increased as well to keep up with increasing demand for authors?

Donya: That’s a really good question. In terms of the quantity of books that are being published, I think across the board in all categories — whether it’s business or nonfiction or fiction or young adult — so many more books are being published now. A lot of that is because of the rise of hybrid publishers, or smaller, independent publishers or self-publishing.

What I’ve seen over my time in publishing is that quantity has exploded. Because of that, the different categories that you mentioned have found their strength. I think for publishers, the number of books that they publish in certain categories, especially the business category, has not changed that much. I even wonder if it has shrunk a little bit.

They’ve had to really focus on quality. Books now are competing with podcasts and television shows and everything that’s online.  You to make sure that they’re very well-written, well-researched books by people who are recognized in their space as the expert. The bar is pretty high for traditional publishers.

That doesn’t mean the other groups aren’t demanding the same kind of quality. Hybrid publishers want to sell books, and in order to do that, they need to be really high-quality books. The hybrid publishers are able to take a bit more risk and maybe publish something that might be considered niche by a bigger publisher.

Self-publishing can be a good opportunity for a lot of people. Some people want control of the entire process, and if that’s you, self-publishing might be a better role for you. It’s also good for people who really are targeting niche audiences. And I think when it comes to quality, I think that there are a lot of self-published books that are amazing. People either are great writers or they find a great editor. They work really hard to make sure that their book is self-published. Or the self-published book is great because it’s representative of their brand.

Unfortunately, I do think that because self-publishing has become so easy and affordable that there are people who probably published too quickly, and they didn’t take the time to make their book great. Their book reads like a first draft, because it is a first draft. I think that’s when self-publishing gets a bad reputation. I will say that there’s probably all levels of quality for self-published books.

From Self-Publishing to a Publishing House

Bob: So for the traditional publishers, if an author has self-published or gone to a hybrid publisher and produced a really good book, does that raise his or her chances of getting the attention of a traditional publisher? Does the traditional publisher look at that and say, wow, this person know how to write… We’ll read their proposal.

Donya: I think a lot of it has to do with then how the book is sold. There’s a lot of amazingly well-written books out there that unfortunately never found an audience. Maybe that’s because it wasn’t really the kind of book that people were interested in, or there wasn’t a real need for that book. But it could also mean that the author really wasn’t marketing the book like they should have, and really integrating it into their brand and their business and looking for ways to actually sell it. I think that a publisher, if they saw low numbers, would probably be concerned about that.

If, however, the author self-published a book and sold it like crazy, then I think that’s definitely going to be attractive to the publisher when they’re coming out with their second book.

Famous Sleeper Hits

Bob: In one of your LinkedIn posts, you wrote about some mega best-selling books that that actually were not overnight successes. Can you talk about some of them and how long it took them to get market traction, and then how they got market traction? What happened to make the audience suddenly recognize that this is a good book, making sales go up?

Donya: A lot of authors see this huge bestseller, and they think it was an overnight success. They really don’t know that the years that went into it. One of my favorite books on this topic is “The Long Game,” by Dorie Clark. I highly recommend that for anyone who wants to be a thought leader, because it really is about strategically and consciously building your brand, and that it can take time. I know that’s frustrating, but I think if you put in the effort, the end result is definitely worth it.

Many people who have had that sort of huge success started by coming up with the ideas, doing the research, and putting the time into understanding what else was out there and how their research or ideas might be different. Then they tested it with their audiences. They started to write stuff on LinkedIn and build their platform. After this slow build, when they’re ready to work on the book, they have ideas that have built them a following. Then they’re able to go to a publisher with this great idea, all this other stuff supporting it, and a big audience hungry and ready for this book.

Bob: Did it take some time before Dorie’s book became a hit?

Donya: I didn’t work with Dorie, but I do know of a much older book, “Who Moved My Cheese,” that has an interesting publishing story. We did a “Who Moved My Cheese” seminar when I was at McGraw Hill and people liked this funny story about mice and cheese and change and leadership, and thought it was an instant success. In reality, the authors were building their speaking and their consulting so that, every time they spoke, everyone in the audience got a copy of that book. Those were built-in sales, and that’s what catapulted it to the list.

Once “Who Moved My Cheese” was published, for five or 10 years I got so many proposals for fables, because I think everyone thought it was the fable format that sold that book. I didn’t work with the authors, but I would argue that it was their training machine that they had in place before the book came out — the ideas and everything that kind of surrounded the book — that made it a success. And that certainly did not happen overnight.

A Marathon, Not a Sprint

Bob: I think Geoffrey Moore’s first book, “Crossing the Chasm,” didn’t become a mega bestseller when it first came out in 1992. It took some time.

Donya: That’s a really important lesson: It’s a marathon, not a sprint. I’ve said that so many times to so many authors over the years, and it’s hard when you’re feeling impatient and you want to be successful. Just remember that all these people who have reached amazing levels of success had to roll up their sleeves.

Bob: So the author comes to you, you publish his or her book, then after six months there’s not much market interest. Will a lot of authors give up too early?

Donya: Definitely. They give up early and they don’t quite grasp how important it is to market the book. That’s really a big part of their responsibility. And certainly a publisher is going to be helping with that. I think that because the book is such an important part of the brand that an author is building, they’re in control of making it successful. It’s so important that before that book is out, they really think about how they’re going to promote it and integrate it for the very long term.

Generative AI in the Publishing Industry

Bob: Yeah, okay, shifting gears here. Different topic, but very timely: the use of generative AI. Have you seen any book proposals or even entire manuscripts that you suspect were written by generative AI? I don’t need names.

Donya: I’d have to keep confidential any any proposals that I’ve seen. I did get one where they were very overt that it was co-written with, with AI, whatever that means.

Obviously these are my opinions, not Aevitas’, but I personally think that AI is something that publishers, agents, and writers are trying to wrap their head around. Publishers are worried that authors are going to use AI. Authors are worried that publishers are going to design their cover with AI. So it makes sense that there’s a lot of conversation around it right now as new contracts are being negotiated and they are trying to get some language about AI in those agreements.

I definitely don’t think that an author should use AI to write their book. There are so many people out there who have great ideas, and people who use AI to help actually write their book, are taking away the opportunity for someone else who’s putting in the hard work to write it themselves. That’s not very fair.

Also, some AI tools are not as helpful as people think they are. One author, just when the book was about to go to the printer, put their whole book through Grammarly. It’s a great tool for someone who’s writing a cover letter or other professional document, but it made the book very stiff and formal instead of conversational. Many times the author’s writing style is more casual and fluid. Changing that would turn it into stale prose, as opposed to the author’s kind of unique writing that came out naturally.

I don’t think that using AI is a great way to present your thought leadership. You may be able to use it to start on a research path. Have AI suggest some things, and then read more about them and see where that takes you and do the other research.

Finding the Right Agent

Bob: Changing the topic again: I have dealt for many years with business people who want to write a business book or a management book, and they sometimes can’t secure an agent. What are the three biggest pieces of advice that you would give, especially first-time business book authors, in trying to get an agent interested and obviously to take them on?

Donya: There are so many different agents out there, and they all represent lots of different things, so the first thing is targeting someone who is interested in your category and has experience in it, just like you would target a publisher. It’s a relationship. Ideally, if you’re going to write many books over many years, you want someone who understands your ideas and is able to represent them and sell them.

Second, an agent who knows the business might have some suggestions on how to make the proposal better and more sellable. You have to be open-minded to that feedback. Thought leaders have been so in control of their business and their brand that when someone gives them feedback it can be hard to hear. I really recommend keeping an open mind to that.

Finally, talk with your agent about your bigger picture goals. For thought leaders, a book is one piece of the puzzle. An agent can help thought leaders think through the big picture in terms of whether a book is right for their brand. While agents can help you scale your business, they can give some good advice on what you should be writing about. If they understand the goals that you have as a thought leader, they can help you achieve that.

Careers in Book Publishing

Bob: Very good advice. Finally, a lot of our audience are not thought leaders or people who even aspire to be thought leaders. They’re people I call thought leadership professionals: editors, ghost writers, graphic artists, and people who want to be book editors, acquisition editors, manuscript editors, and maybe even literary agents. So if somebody wants to make a career in securing, editing, and publishing books by thought leaders or people who aspire to be thought leaders, what must they do for a successful career — especially since book publishing is changing right before our eyes?

Donya: Because it’s changing, there are many opportunities. Beyond the model of traditional publishing, people can find these opportunities in other ways. Publishing is unique because it’s an apprenticeship industry. Many people start out as assistants and learn the very unique ways that publishing works. They advance their career by building relationships. Younger people who are just starting out should look for any kind of internship or part-time role where they can learn from people who have been in this industry, or find a mentor whom they can shadow. People who are switching careers who want to support thought leaders should consider building a freelance business that helps people develop their thought leadership, then transition into a more traditional corporate role doing that.

Bob: Do you see the number of traditional publishers and jobs with traditional publishers increasing over the rest of the decade?

Donya: It’s always in flux. Simon Schuster started Simon Acumen last year, an imprint specifically for business. I’ve seen other houses that have grown their portfolio and the number of editors that they’ve had over the years. The business category is interesting because certain houses have imprints that might be focused on business, but other more general nonfiction editors might do one or two business books a year. Then, of course, more targeted publishers do a large number of business books every year so there’s a lot of opportunity there. If you have a good idea and a good following, and you’re able to put work into it, there are lots of opportunities.

Bob: Anything else you’d like to say about what about the agency industry? Do you see that growing if there are more business books published and more authors who want to get published, whether it’s with a traditional publisher, hybrid, or self-published? Do you see the agency world changing?

Donya: One benefit of being an agent is you can represent lots of different things. Many agents might represent business books and general nonfiction, but also do fiction and young adults, so that’s a little hard to answer.

Bob: Donya, this has been great. I really appreciate your time and your wisdom and your experience.

Donya: Thank you so much. This has just been an amazing opportunity.