The WRITE Strategy
Welcome to The WRITE Strategy newsletter for business book writers and self publishers.
The Write Strategy is a community of business experts and leaders who want to share and leverage their knowledge, build their profile and be recognised as a leading voice in their field.
Thought leadership and your book. Which comes first?
October 2025 Edition
Thought leadership has become one of the ‘go-to’ phrases for many senior level executives, consultants and business influencers. And one of the ‘go-to’ ways of building thought leadership is to write a book.
Why a book is THE most effective way to highlight your thought leadership
At its heart, thought leadership is about influence—getting other people to think differently about something specific and/or sometimes challenging the status quo.
It is NOT about generating content and simply commenting on world events and trends. The world does not need more ordinary AI generated content that simply fills up LinkedIn, Substack, Medium or newsletters. Nor do events or conferences need more of the same speakers repackaging other people’s insights.
Thought leadership is about having a clear purpose, bringing alternate views and insightful points to your industry/profession, being prepared to stand up for your perspective/knowledge and being committed to empowering others over time.
If this is you, then writing and self publishing your book is a GREAT idea.
In the age of the immediate and viral, AI, Influencers, TikTok sensations and You Tube, the concept of deep, thoroughly researched, tested and explored thought and writing on a specific topic may seem somewhat out of step.
But I’m here to share with you that this is EXACTLY the right time to step back and dig deep into your knowledge, practical learning over time, insight and foresight.
Everyone is exhausted by the brutal invasion of our headspace by the loudest, the attention seeking instant experts, the AI-generated slop creators and the downright charlatans who parade themselves as, well, thought-leaders.
People are seeking out trusted advisers, real thought leaders
If you have spent decades building your expertise and reputation through research, application, dedication, reading, thinking and writing you have the basis of thought leadership.
You can craft your knowledge and experience into a book that focuses on the needs and challenges of your specific target audience.
Writing a book to capture your knowledge and insights is not a brain dump of everything you have learnt, experienced and put into practice. In fact, that’s the worst thing you can do for your potential readers and for you because your readers will be overwhelmed.
In a world where:
• information masquerades as knowledge
• opinion parades as fact
• content is pushed into your feeds
• those who shout loudest with the boldest claims pay for your attention
• AI fakes and scams have sewn distrust, fear and loathing,
taking the time to think, read, craft, converse, be thoughtful and decent and then share your knowledge and insights through a book will stand out. It will be a slower pathway, but it will be more valued and more valuable. You will build you reputation as a trusted thought-leader because you cared enough to understand your current and potential readers/clients. You put their needs and challenges first and shared parts of your knowledge that directly helped them.
And, you do this over time with a sense of purpose, care and decency.
5 things to do
1. Research your target audience. Everyone who has worked with me gets this message very early and regularly. Successful self published books are not written in a vacuum. They are written by understanding who your primary audience is and what their key challenges are. There’s no substitute for doing this homework
2. Research and follow the journalists, influencers and podcasters in your area early. Book marketing and visibility is about establishing real relationships with people who already have visibility. Be genuine, engage way before you need to. Don’t treat these people as “one-book launch stands”. That’s really not beneficial to anyone.
3. Develop your book’s compelling story. One of the key elements I work on with our clients is the compelling story for their book. Nail this and you’re way ahead of most self published authors. Here’s a quick exercise for you to do...take your time and develop several versions.
“This is a book for [what people/audience]. Unlike other books for [people], only this book [differentiation].”
4. Take the time to engage with people in your networks. It’s easy to get focused on creating and delivering your own content and get lazy about engaging with others – in real life and online.
5. Check out the winners of the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards. CLICK HERE I'm not sure if he’s read any of them. I haven’t as yet but there’s a couple I can’t wait to get my hands on.
5 things from The Book Adviser
1. Marketing your book in the age of AI. The next frontier for AI is e-commerce. ChatGPT has launched a shopping feature, Snap to Shop which has been active for some time on Perplexity and Gemini. It is now being integrated with Google Shopping. The secret sauce (apparently) is being omnichannel—LLMs pull from YouTube, Reddit, Wikipedia, Quora and more, so having a brand and a community active across them all is what will get your book visible above your competition.
Your website and LinkedIn are simply not enough to be ‘found’. The more sites that mention you, the better. LLMs look at the context of the mention. And that’s a good thing as it might stop AI generated slop.
2. October/November are book launch months.
Ian Reilly – Encounter. A journey into Chaos, Culture and Compassion
Abby Bloom – The Cost of not Caring – NSW Parliament House
Phil Pryor – Risking it All. The essential guide to navigating the challenges all family businesses face
Kirsty Ludbrook – Sensorial. The Nine Sense of Branding
Jo Cooper – The art of the underdog. Toppling the Powers of Tower
Rene Huey-Lipton – My Authentic Voice. Find it, Use it, Celebrate it
I'll be sharing posts and social media about all these books, each one special.
3. Books in Homes. I was recently interviewed for Books in Homes Australia where I am a Role Model and sponsor a school. If you’ve ever thought of making a positive difference in the lives of children through reading, Books in Homes is for you. CLICK HERE
4. Do you need a book editor, and what is one anyway? If you’re working with us you won’t need an editor as that’s part of what we do. If not, an editor could well be the difference between and average and great book. Here’s a link to some more information about what an editor does. CLICK HERE
5. What’s an ISBN and do you need one for your book? An ISBN is a world-wide ID number for your book. You don’t have to have one, but it’s better if you do and it doesn’t cost much. You will need one for each version of your book AND you will need it to access Amazon and IngramSpark and other self publishing platforms. You also have the option to link a barcode to the ISBN…also handy but again not a requirement.
5 things to know
1. It’s book launch season. It seems everyone wants to launch their book before Australia shuts down in mid-November. The BEST and most important thing you can do WAY before you plan your launch is to build your email list. The sooner you start the more prepared you’ll be when the time comes to start marketing your book. If the thought of Excel spreadsheets gives you the heebie-jeebies – get over it. This will be your secret book launch too.
2. If you are using Amazon or any other book selling platform it’s mission critical that you get the categories and keywords required right. These two elements are the way the online platforms recommend your book to people who are looking. Pick the wrong categories and keywords and your book won’t be ‘found’.
3. Is paid advertising going to work for promoting your book? It depends if you have a great cover, title and subtitle, book blurb, the right categories and that they are consistent across everywhere the book is mentioned/available. Setting up and testing paid ads across Amazon, Meta, TikTok, BookBub, Australian Bookseller + Publishing or other channels/platforms needs careful planning and execution.
4. How to package your content in the AI search world. You need to create something that people haven’t already heard/read about. If you can develop phrases, diagrams, mythologies that you own.
Then, write your content for a human, but package it for AI. What do I mean by this? Write it in a way that AI can clearly understand: headings, structured data, FAQs, putting 2-3 key points at the top of the article.
Each piece of content should cover one topic and be thorough.
5. OpenAI expects business to burn $115 billion through 2029. OpenAI has sharply raised its projected cash burn through 2029 to $115 billion as it ramps up spending to power the artificial intelligence behind its popular ChatGPT chatbot.
To control its soaring costs, OpenAI will seek to develop its own data centre server chips and facilities to power its technology in partnership with U.S. semiconductor giant Broadcom.
OpenAI has also extended its tie-up with Oracle with a planned 4.5-gigawatts of data centre capacity, building on its Stargate initiative, a project of up to $500 billion and 10 gigawatts that includes Japanese technology investor SoftBank Group.
Why is this relevant to us? If you want your book to sell, you need to understand how to make it visible in the age of AI.
special offer
Abby Bloom
The Cost of Not Caring is different way to think about the dilemma of today’s unpaid carer in the age group 45 to 70, as well as those younger or older.
If you are a woman in the age range 45 to 70 you probably could have written many of the chapters in this book. If you are a man aged 45-70? Not as likely, but a third of you might resonate.
You are likely to be working part- or full-time, until the physical and emotional strain is too much to bear. You are truly “The Caring Generation” and simultaneously “The Club Sandwich Generation”.
You are ground zero of “the care crisis” and millions of working people like you are trying to do their best to support their ageing parents and other loved ones while holding down one or more paid jobs, raising a family, supporting an ageing spouse, often managing a child with disability, and in many cases also pitching in time, energy and money to help with grandchildren.
is it time to publish your book?
The Book Adviser has helped more than 400 business leaders, owners, consultants and entrepreneurs to successfully self publish and market their business book.
Find out more about The Book Adviser Program CLICK HERE.
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