My friend Tara Jacobsen (Marketing Artfully) once published 25 books in 26 weeks or something outrageous like that. In the early days of Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing, she and her bestie Rebekah Welch (Rebekah & Co.) decided to write some books and make some money.
Tara, who had been writing and speaking about content creation, marketing, and a few more topics went through her hard drive and found things like:
- Old blog posts
- The start(s) of book(s)
- Recordings of seminars, talks, trainings, and interviews she had done
- PowerPoint presentations
- Systems and processes that she used in her own business
- Emails and Newsletters
- Onboarding docs
- Case studies and client stories
- Client FAQs
Beast Mode
Now, Tara is a BEAST when it comes to doing something. (She made a video a day for an entire year when she started a YouTube channel.) I suspect Rebekah is, too. PLUS, they were both fifteen years younger and had energy. (Gosh, I miss having energy!)
With that in mind, here’s what their schedule looked like:
- Friday: Meet for lunch (Margaritas and Mexican food). Discuss which book they were going to work on.
- Brainstorm what the book would cover: ideas, content, structure (how-to, informational, whatever)
- Monday: Tara would pull together all the material she had on the topic.
- Tuesday: Tara would get up early and write from sun up past sundown, slamming out a rough draft of 25,000+ words. Which she would send off to Rebekah.
- Wednesday-Thursday: Rebekah would edit and add the content and whip it into book format while Tara designed the cover.
- Thursday night or so they would upload and publish the eBook.
And they did this for 25 or 26 weeks.
Crazy, right?
Tara told me it was “easy” because she was writing about things she knew about. That means there was very little research left for her to do. It was all stuff she knew backwards and forwards.
If you can talk for a couple of hours on something, you can fill a book.
You’d be surprised how much material you already have for your book. Blog posts, talks, webinars, trainings… even emails and client conversations you’ve had dozens (or hundreds) of times.
Most people think they need to start their book.
In reality, they need to gather, organize, and shape what already exists.
Can You Talk for a Couple of Hours About What You Do?
If you can, you can probably write your book.
Or—more accurately—you already have the raw material for it.
If I sat you down and said, “Teach me what you do,” you’d:
- Explain your method
- Tell stories about clients
- Share mistakes you see all the time
- Offer warnings, shortcuts, and best practices
- Go on the occasional passionate tangent
That’s not nothing. That’s a manuscript in rough form.
What trips people up isn’t a lack of expertise—it’s not knowing:
- What belongs in the book
- What order it should go in
- What to cut, keep, or expand
- How to turn scattered content into a cohesive argument
That’s where most business book ideas stall out.
Not because the author doesn’t have enough to say—but because they’re too close to their own material to see the shape of the book hiding inside it.
And that’s where I come in.
As a book coach and ghostwriter, I help you:
- Identify the strongest core idea for your book
- Pull relevant content from what you’ve already created
- Organize it into a clear, compelling structure
- Fill in the gaps so it reads like a book, not a content bundle
You don’t need to start from scratch.
You need someone who knows how to see the book you can’t quite see yet—and help you finish it.
Because chances are, the content for your book is already sitting on your hard drive.
You just haven’t called it a book yet.
Let’s talk about your book. Schedule a free 30 minute consultation here: Meet with Barbara
