When I first reviewed Rick Gilbert’s material, I pointed out that his working manuscript lacked a cohesive argument. The information he presented needed to:
- Build on–instead of repeat–itself.
- Always point back to the reader in terms of relevance.
I ended my memo by saying that after reading all his pages, I was itching to re-think the book’s outline and re-organize the material.
“Scratch that itch,” Rick replied.
The reorganization wound up working as well as we both had hoped, providing Rick with a springboard from which to complete the manuscript. His self-published book helped put his company, Power Speaking, on the map. “Speaking Up: Surviving Executive Presentations is creating a lot of buzz,” said Rick. “It is totally amazing how much legitimacy it gave our Speaking Up workshop and how much credibility it gives us. Writing and self-publishing my book was absolutely the right thing to do. We just printed our second thousand books.”
The story doesn’t end there. When I recently touched base with Rick, he told me that the book had been picked up by Berrett-Koehler. One of the publishing company’s VPs loved the fact that Rick’s book included QR codes linked to related videos. Berrett-Koehler published Rick’s book in April with a foreword by Scott McNealy, founder of Sun Microsystems. Speaking Up is currently being translated into Chinese and an Indian company just bought 2,000 copies. Next up? A book tour. Speeches. Business classes. Even fundraisers in which the book will play a starring role.
Congrats on your self-publishing success, Rick! I couldn’t be more pleased for you or prouder of the book you wrote.
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