Watch Mike Harris's Find Your Lightbulb Tutorial

Mike Harris's Blog

Every Prime Minister needs a Willie

Monday, April 7, 2008

I used Margaret Thatcher to illustrate a point about leadership in the book . I was reminded of her famous quote (about cabinet colleague Willie Whitelaw) and with the book about to be published it made me wonder what every author needs?

Well evidently these days every author needs a web site and mine's ready to roll now thanks to :

Mark Garwell at Webplacing who did the web site design and construction and

Lisa Murray who did the copywriting for the web site and was my book editor

In putting the book together Lisa and I between us:

- Documented the particularly insightful conversations I could remember with entrepreneurs/innovators/leaders who I had met and/or worked with in the last 20 years (I ended up recalling conversations with 56 people covering 48 companies)

- Did 35 in depth interviews (1-2 hours each) with successful entrepreneurs/innovators/leaders specifically for the book

- Supplemented the conversations and the interviews by researching what was available in the public domain about the entrepreneurs I was using as examples . I was interested in what they had to say for themselves in print or in media interviews rather than what other people had written about them

- Wrote about 120000 words which was ultimately edited down to 65000 (that's a lot of writing and a lot of editing) .

We got each chapter reviewed as soon as a draft was written by a group of family, friends and experts, including my wife: whose encouragement I really valued and whose judgment was impeccable when it came to deciding which of my numerous anecdotes and stories actually added value to the book as opposed to being : self indulgent and only funny after several glasses of wine and then only the first time you hear it .

My editor's overriding concern on the other hand was to make sure the book contained a set of principles that were well supported by examples and were easy to use in a practical way by budding entrepreneurs . I think she succeeded fantastically well in making that happen and I hope if you read the book you agree.

Actually having never written a book before I would have floundered without the professional support of an experienced writer. So that's what every author needs...if you want to write a business book get yourself an editor!

0 Comments: