Traditionally, publishing a book has meant selling your idea to a publishing house. That still holds true for authors who want to find a mainstream audience for their work. For those whose goals are more specific—for example, businesspeople seeking to expand their professional life to include lecturing, teaching seminars, or motivational speaking—there is now another option. They can publish their own books through companies such as iUniverse.com, which produces professionally designed books at a very affordable price. This revolutionary type of publishing takes advantage of new technology that allows authors to “print on demand” any number of books they need, from a few dozen to thousands.

The most obvious reason businesspeople choose to write books is to establish their credibility in a particular field. Yet there are other, equally important benefits. Writing a book forces you to distill your best ideas into a single outstanding package. During the process of writing, you will organize your program, weed out the weak points, and maximize the strong ones. When you’re done, you'll have a comprehensive platform on which to build the next phase of your career . You'll also have a book you can sell on your website, at your seminars, through catalogs, and on commercial sites such as Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.com. You may eventually decide to sell the rights to a mainstream publisher—it’s much easier to do when the book already has a track record.

The process of writing a book on demand is identical to writing one for a publishing house. The main difference is that you won’t need to write a proposal first. Instead we’ll sit down together (or have a few phone conversations) and determine the scope, approach, and general outline of the book, and then we'll start writing. For more details on the process, see How I Work.