Over the weekend, while I calculated author royalties for Summit Press, the publishing house I run, I came across an anomaly.
A.J. Wasserstein’s book, written and published 4 years ago, had sold over 100 copies.
This is eyebrow raising for one big reason: A.J. does NOTHING to promote his book.
He doesn’t do podcast interviews, nor does he lead capture within the pages of his book. He’s not on social media or on any author-type platforms. He doesn’t have a publicist or ads manager.
Nothing.
I Googled him, again, and couldn’t find more than a handful of images. Sure, there were a couple of shots with him at Yale, where he now teaches. A few from his involvement in some investment group, in philanthropy. But none from a typical photo shoot, where one tries to look all sage and important, preferably while holding a coffee mug. Given his druthers, A.J. would probably pull these pictures if he could.
For those of us who make our living on-line, who prance around on social media doing our damndest to stop the scroll, this is next to unheard of.
I mean, my mother, who’s 84 and lives in Fargo, has a bigger presence than A.J.
The thing is, A.J. was never interested in writing an expert-positioning book. Like a lot of CEO types—at the helm or retired—he wasn’t after visibility, more customers, or the domination of his niche. He’d been there, done that, yadda yadda.
What he wanted to do was write and publish a legacy book
See, A.J.’s eldest child was about to graduate from high school and head off to college. Unsure–as many parents are– that he’d properly prepared the boy for the world, A.J. wanted to gift him with wisdom and advice. Not just his own, but that of respected friends and colleagues.
What he produced in the process was heartfelt, without being sentimental or self-glorifying, and useful. Not just to A.J.’s kids, but to other young people as well. (The book, by the way, was also well structured and well written, which goes a long way when separating wheat from chafe.)
Each May, graduation season in the United States, A.J.’s book sales go crazy. I don’t know how people find out about it, but they do. This May….well, holy crap!
I asked A.J. about the uptick, but he was equally perplexed. He hasn’t opened his yap about the book in years. The book, in other words, seems to have a life of its own.
A legacy book can mean a lot of different things to different people.
For some, A.J. included, a legacy book is designed to leave those you love with an important message. It’s not written with a larger audience in mind, simply friends and family.
For others, such a book is meant to flesh out personal stories, vital life lessons, and meaningful ideas that would otherwise be lost to death, namely yours. The target audience is much larger than one’s immediate circle. (A memoir is a good example.)
Certain professionals have spent years, if not decades, building a body of knowledge. They’ve done extensive research, written theses and white papers, developed a unique area of expertise. And they want others to have this information for no other purpose than to better the world. To ensure that all that glorious, hard work doesn’t get buried.
I market to coaches, speakers, service professionals, and entrepreneurs who want to write client-attracting, expert-positioning book. The driver behind this type of book is embedded in that sentence.
And yet, I’ll often talk to folks who claim to want to write an expert-positioning book, yet what they really want is to create a legacy. Their motivation is different, even when they think it’s not.
There’s a lot to be said about writing a legacy book. There’s no outcome that needs to be kept in mind while writing other than the transfer of wisdom in a readable, consumable manner. The job at hand is to properly curate information, not dump it all on the page. (That’s easier said than done. Don’t get me wrong.)
Sometimes, the driver behind a book is a combination of both. And that’s OK. You must, however, understand what you’re after, and why. So you don’t confuse your message or buy yourself unnecessary work.