Books we have helped into the world

I came with eleven years of workshop notes and no idea how to make a book out of them. The outline stage alone was worth the fee — it was the first time I could see the shape of what I actually knew. The finished book reads like me on a good day.

I had three self-published titles that were not selling. They showed me my covers side by side with the top forty in my category at thumbnail size and I understood the problem in about four seconds. New covers, re-optimised listings, and the back catalogue started moving.

Writing about my mother's illness was not something I could do alone. The interviews were handled with real care, and they were clear from the start about what would be in the book and what would not. My family have all read it. That matters more than sales.

English is my second language and I was worried the edit would flatten how I write. It did the opposite — it removed what was getting in the way. The copy edit also caught two factual errors my own department had missed.

I was quoted in euros from the first page, which sounds small and was not — I could actually compare. The project ran to the schedule they gave me at the start, and the book has brought in more consulting enquiries than my website ever did.

The book was supposed to be a business card. It has turned into the reason people call. Twelve speaking bookings in the first year, all traced back to someone reading it. They understood that was the goal and built the whole thing around it.