Book Coaching 101, Part 1: What’s a Book Coach?

A brief history of a new profession

Welcome to my Book Coaching 101 post series, in which I talk about the basics of running a book coaching business. Thanks to Debbie Ridpath Ohi over at Inky Girl, whose charming and informative Picture Books 101 series inspired me to do this. I am beginning at the beginning, answering the question, What’s a book coach? If you have a suggestion for a future column topic, feel free to let me know in the comments.

I decided to post this first piece tonight, even though my official Substack launch is next week because I returned from a long vacation to see so many writers signed up to follow and I didn’t want to keep you all waiting. I’m planning on a meaty post next week about pricing book coaching services and look forward to a conversation on a topic that’s central to so much of my beliefs about book coaching.

I’ll also be doing shorter FAQ posts, and Q&As with book coaches.

Thanks much for following me—and for those of you who paid, an extra special thanks! I didn’t expect that! I’m dreaming up something useful/fun/special to offer you and will let you know when I’ve landed on it.

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Book coaching is a profession that has emerged to fill in the gaps left open by changes in the publishing industry over the last few decades.

It used to be that publishers had the time and the bandwidth to nurture writers — to help them develop their books and guide their careers. The idea that a promising writer would be given a chance — as well as time, training, resources, and mentoring —was woven into the fabric of the industry. The majority of the writers given these opportunities were white men, but writers of all kinds bought into the dream of being picked and having their work brought to life. 

This publishing model began to slip away as the world sped up and became hyper-connected. The Internet made everything faster and it put the means of production into the hands of every writer, which changed the nature of the entire publishing landscape.

Publishing is a unique industry in that every single product is something brand new. When Toyota comes out with a new Camry, they invest in research and development to make sure it will be popular and profitable, and then they crank out hundreds of thousands of the same car. My husband worked for Toyota for many years, so they are always my go-to example of an industry that scales in this way, but the same is true for the makers of toothpaste, tennis shoes, and thousands of other commodities. Publishers, however, are taking a chance on every single book they produce. To mitigate their risk, they have always gravitated towards projects that are a “sure bet” — such as a new book by an already-popular writer or a book connected to some other popular media product such as a movie or TV show. But in previous eras, there was also room for editors at publishing companies to take a wild bet, to follow a hunch, or to work with a writer who was not yet ready for prime time.

As technological and cultural changes hit the publishing industry, more ways emerged for publishers to lower their risk. Now instead of carefully selecting a few promising writers, they could publish more books faster to see which ones stuck. They could select projects by writers who already had a large and waiting audience, regardless of the literary merits of those projects. They could tap into celebrities and influencers who seemed to be gaining a tighter grip on global culture.

Publishers still picked the projects they thought would be commercial hits because they still had to make money, but the bandwidth available to nurture writers and take a chance on someone new or unproven seemed to shrink or disappear altogether. 

The result is that writers have to shoulder more of the burden of preparing their work for publication. I’m not talking about the production of books — copyediting, proofreading, layout, and design — but about the work that comes well before that: idea generation, comp title analysis, narrative structure, the design of an argument, the crafting of engaging prose, the slow work of a writer finding their way. It seemed that publishers were no longer going to take a chance on a project that was merely promising. Books had to be much closer to done. Writers had to figure out on their own what done meant and how to get there.

In addition, writers had to be savvier and better informed about the new publishing landscape and where they might fit into it — traditional publishing, hybrid publishing, or independent publishing. It was also now expected that they would spend time connecting with their readers before and after the book deal (shout out to Courtney Maum over at Before and After the Book Deal and my friend Dan Blank at The Creative Shift, who are both doing such good work educating writers about this part of the writing process.)

In other words, publishing has become far more complicated and confusing for writers, and far less forgiving.

Book coaching emerged as a solution for writers who want help navigating the new industry and who need guidance, support, and feedback to do their best work.

So what exactly do book coaches do? 

Everybody knows what a basketball coach does. A basketball coach helps their players perform their best. They come up with training plans. They find ways to motivate the players. They scout the other teams and develop a game plan to achieve the goals of the season. A book coach is doing exactly the same thing for a writer.

We're working with writers all the way through the development of their book, from idea inquiry to finished manuscript. We're helping them define their goals and understand the marketplace. We’re offering editorial feedback and emotional support as they write. We’re holding them accountable and helping them build good habits, because as James Clear teaches us in Atomic Habits, "Making a choice that is 1 percent better or 1 percent worse seems insignificant in the moment, but over the span of moments that make up a lifetime these choices determine the difference between who you are and who you could be. Success is the product of daily habits—not once-in-a-lifetime transformations."

How is book coaching different from editing? 

An editor typically works with a writer when a manuscript is finished. They take those finished pages and work to make them better. Writers usually love to be edited because there is such great relief in finally having somebody pay close attention to their words and ideas. I was fortunate enough to have six books traditionally published (three memoirs and three novels), and I adored the editing process; it felt like the process through which my books finally became what they were meant to be. I couldn’t see the forest for the trees, but my editor could. It was an enormous relief to have someone else in it with me, who cared as much as I did about the work.

A book coach is paying that kind of attention to the writing and to the writer—to their hopes and dreams, their doubts and fears—and we are doing so throughout the entire creative process rather than at one point near the end. It’s enormously powerful.

In his TedTalk, Atul Gawande, the surgeon who wrote the moving memoir Being Mortal, speaks about achieving mastery in any complex endeavor. He says, “Turns out there are numerous problems in making it on your own. You don't recognize the issues that are standing in your way or if you do, you don't necessarily know how to fix them.” Great musicians know this, and great athletes, and great leaders. In a recent Writer’s Digest piece entitled Why It's Okay to Hire a Developmental Editor—and Not Keep It a Secret, bestselling novelist Caroline Leavitt reveals that many great writers know it, too.

A book coach helps a writer identify the problems standing in the way of them doing their best work and we come up with a plan for how to fix them. We work with a writer in service of bringing their creative vision to life.

The most effective intervention designed for human performance

Before giving that TedTalk, Gawande wrote a piece for The New Yorker called The Coach in the Operating Room. This piece has become a touchstone for me because it is so clear-eyed about the power of being coached; whenever I waver in my dedication to what has become my life’s work, I return to this piece to remind myself why it matters. Gawande had started to question the educational model that trains doctors, sends them out into the world to heal patients, and then suddenly stops training them. He began to wonder if an expert at the top of their profession could continue to improve— and determined that a coach was the way to test this hypothesis. He invited a coach into the operating room to watch him at work and was transformed by the experience. He saw how he could improve and keep improving, and found the process exhilarating.

Many writers find a similar thrill in being coached because, unlike surgeons, they have not usually received specialized education in how to write a book. MFA programs don’t focus on book-length projects or teach very much about navigating the marketplace. PhD students may write book-length work, but more often than not, they are writing for an academic audience and not for the wider marketplace. Writers commonly figure it out on their own by reading, studying, trying, and failing — a process that certainly works, as the history of literature has shown, but for some people can also be isolating, inefficient, and frustrating.

Working with a book coach helps writers rise to the occasion of their own stories and ideas. It helps them raise their voice, hone it, and believe in it. It helps them prepare to enter a still-shifting publishing landscape.

 “Coaching done well,” Gawande wrote, “may be the most effective intervention designed for human performance.”