Expert Round-Up Topic: What is a Publishing Myth That Cost You Time and/or Money?
SEAN REDFEARN
When I started writing my book, the outcome I wanted was never to become an Amazon bestseller, even though I achieved that in the Business Consulting category. The book was written to build my personal profile and generate interest in Red-Fern, my specialist digital marketing agency for manufacturers. That meant I had to treat the book the same way I treat marketing for my clients. Write for a specific audience or reach nobody.
The first piece of advice I received was to broaden the audience. “Don’t just write for manufacturers. Write for all B2B businesses. You will sell more copies.” It sounded logical. It was the worst advice I could have followed. So, I didn’t!
I stuck to my plan of writing a book that would allow me to send out copies to my target audience, those who would pay 6 and 7 figure fees for my digital agency to grow their manufacturing business. Since the launch in May 2026, I have sold only 35 copies on Amazon across the US, Canada, and the UK. That does not sound like a success, does it? However, those 35 people and the wider audience to whom I sent free books have invested 7 figures into my digital marketing agency to grow their business.
So, my advice is, don’t listen to others when writing about something you believe in, something where you know the content and context in-side-out. You’ll enjoy the writing process and the end result, much more than writing something somebody else told you to write.
Sean Redfearn is the Founder of Red-Fern and author of The Always-On Manufacturing Marketing System.
SERENA H. HUANG, PH.D.
A big publishing myth is that having a significant social media following means your book will automatically have a large audience. I’ve spent a lot of time building my personal brand on LinkedIn and now have close to 30K followers, 12K+ sub on my LI newsletter, and I was surprised to find that this meant very little for conversion to actual book purchases. It turns out that the majority of my followers loved my content but not many wanted to buy a 250 page hard cover book I’ve written.
A little context might be helpful as well. My book, The Inclusion Equation – Leveraging Data & AI for Organizational Diversity and Wellbeing, went to the printer the week the election results came out and hit the shelves days after the Executive Order banning DEI was announced. I had a launch plan, book tour, and media strategy that all had to shift overnight. I learned to listen to the market and fortunately found that my responsible AI framework and “human skills in the age of AI” resonated well with a much larger audience. I ended up pivoting the launch/tour/media strategy to focus on these topics rather than pushing the entire book onto people, which helped tremendously with the momentum.
Serena H. Huang, Ph.D. is the Founder of Data with Serena and the author of The Inclusion Equation – Leveraging Data & AI for Organizational Diversity and Wellbeing.
https://www.datawithserena.com/
JAN CULLINANE
I’m an author (several traditionally published and award-winning books), and the myth that cost me a lot of time was the common belief that it’s almost impossible to be a successful first-time author without hiring experts to help navigate the publishing process.
After a long career as a science educator at the high school and college level (I earned my B.S. and M.Ed. from the University of Maryland and I’m ABD from the Rutgers in Science Education), I decided to completely change direction and write holistic books about retirement. I’m a Boomer, I was good at researching, and I noticed that most retirement books were about money, but neglected the many other aspects of this transition (relocating, finding new friends, the health aspects of aging…basically, how to “make the rest of your life the best of your life”).
So, although I was a complete unknown as an author, I figured there was a book out there that would help me write a great book proposal, and indeed there was – The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Getting Published by Sheree Bykofsky. I knew there was a huge potential audience for my books – the 70 million Boomers who would be navigating retirement. Using Bykofsky’s book, I wrote a compelling book proposal and submitted it to a publisher. Rodale loved the book and published it. So, the myth that a novice author needs to hire pros to navigate the publishing system is not true; you DO need a great product and determination, though, and I did ask an agent to help with “shopping my book” to publishers (she was paid a portion of book sales).
Jan Cullinane is the author of The New Retirement: The Ultimate Guide to the Rest of Your Life and The Single Woman’s Guide to Retirement.
