We settled in to our coffee chat by exchanging the usual pleasantries.
“Hi, I’m Paula. I help women write and publish their books.”
She sat across from me in Zoom.
“My name is Denise. . .” Her cell phone lit up and started to ring.
She tapped her phone to see who it was, and turned it to mute.
“ . . . And I have this idea, you know, for a book,” she said.
“What’s it about?” I sat quietly and waited.
She shifted in her seat, looked at me, and smiled as she threw her arms in the air in a flourish of energy.
“It’s about my experience as a professional nanny.”
I took a breath.
“The great nanny jobs and the bad ones. I’ve had them all!”
I thought for a moment about how to respond, and decided to see what else she had to say.
“What exactly do you want to say in this book? You have stories, but what is the point of the book?” I asked.
“Just how I put up with the bad parents and the great kids and some great parents, but mostly the bad ones,” she said. “I have some unbelievable stories to tell.”
It was obvious she didn’t know. I needed to tell her. She deserved that after going on and on about her experience and how fun her book would be to read.
“Have you read The Nanny Diaries? The book? It was a movie, too, starring Scarlett Johansson.”
She stopped moving and her jaw dropped, literally.
“Wait, what?”
“The book was published in the early 2000s and the movie came out a few years later. It made a pretty big splash . . .” My voice trailed away.
“It’s been published AND a movie was made?” she said. She looked at her phone. I guessed she was searching to see for herself.
I continued the conversation, not because I saw a client in the making, but to help Diana who was now shell-shocked by the similarity between her book, a memoir, and a best-selling novel about nannies, the children they cared for, and the employers they dealt with.
This is an example of what separates someone who’s serious about getting published from someone who dreams about a best-selling status for their book and the big splash that can come from writing something as juicy as the stories she told me on this call.
A single google search would have brought up The Nanny Diaries. Denise, instead, was infuriated that her story had been told a decade ago by someone else. Could she come up with a different focus or slant to write about?
Yes. I don’t know what that would be, but I left the conversation with instructions for her to find out. She would need to read what’s already been published and find something fresh and unique about her own experience.
Frankly, though, because The Nanny Diaries was such a big success, she would have to work extra hard to find a new slant. The Nanny Diaries was a compilation of stories the two authors blended into a novel, but they are nanny stories based on the authors’ actual nanny jobs, and they sounded identical to Denise’s experience.
If I had consulted with her, I would ask her all sorts of questions, including:
- What were her duties as a nanny and how respectful were the parents?
- What common experiences did she have over and over again?
- What egregious overstepping of authority did her clients take, like asking her to be their house cleaner or chef in addition to nanny?
- In what geographic region was she a nanny? And what were the income levels and jobs her clients had?
- What was the saddest thing that happened? The one that made her the angriest? And the ones that made her satisfied and happy enough to keep her working as a nanny?
I would have asked these and more based on her answers along with ones about her life goals and where a book fits into that and how much did she want to write and promote one?
With your nonfiction book in particular, think about how you are going to serve your readership by offering them something new to think about, respond to, and want to read because the book cover is compelling and the copy on the jacket flap draws you in.
Would-be authors often come to me with a “great idea.” But they haven’t done a google or Amazon search to see if their book has already been written. That is step #1.
Your topic needs to be researched, then defined and refined for an audience of eager readers—YOUR audience.
What book topic are you defining and refining today so they’re not a repeat of one already published? If you have a book that’s waiting to be written, check out this special offer for a Plan Your Writing Session.