Is Book Coaching a Scam?

A moment on a soapbox

One of Author Accelerator’s book coaching students recently had a writing instructor (who teaches elsewhere about blog and newsletter writing) suggest that the coach-in-training shouldn’t call themselves a book coach because so many people “see coaches as something scammy.”

A certified coach responded that they had been on a selection committee where someone in power said something similar—about how book coaches are mostly unsuccessful writers trying to pad their income.

Still another certified coach chimed in to say that they had a potential client ask how he could have assurance that the coach wouldn't lead him on about "being a good writer" just to keep the money coming in—another accusation of scamminess.

These stories make me so angry—and not just because these comments are an attack on the work I do every day and have done every day for 11 years at Author Accelerator, or because I personally know so many excellent book coaches who do incredible work with great integrity.

It’s because it feels like the same “all or nothing” attitude that colors so much of the discourse around so many critical issues of our time related to civility, the climate, and citizenship. (Even the recent “no one buys books/lots of people buy books” conversation here on Substack fell into this same pattern.) The closed-minded thinking is what angers me.

Who are these people to criticize an entire industry? That's like saying, “music teachers are scammy," or "personal trainers are all bogus," or "dentists just tell you that you have cavities to make money." (I am refraining from adding any political statements to this list because I don’t wish to bring politics into this space, but you can easily imagine what those kind of statements could be.)

I mean, WHAT?

Sure, there are bad actors everywhere in every industry. There always have been and there always will be. And yes, writers are vulnerable because they are so desperate to have their work read and the path to publishing is confusing, and complicated, and changing every day. 

But book coaching is teaching. Book coaching is editing. Book coaching is helping someone determine the best way to bring their work into the world. Book coaching provides accountability and project management to help writers meet their goals. None of that is inherently scammy.

What Is Scammy?

It is a scam to promise a writer something no one can deliver—representation by an agent, a book deal with a big publisher (or any publisher), enough money to ride off into the sunset, a wide readership.

It is a scam to tell a writer they have a chance at riches and fame when there is no evidence that they are skilled at storytelling or crafting a compelling argument about an idea.

It is a scam to position book coaching as therapy (or the book coach as trauma-informed) when the book coach is not trained as a therapist or in trauma.

It is a scam to let a writer continue to believe something that is not true about the industry—that an agent and a publisher will do all the marketing for them, that a good book can be written in 30 days, that an Amazon bestseller flag is a meaningful metric of success. (It’s a fun metric, but it is not recognized by the industry as meaningful in any way.)

It is a scam to be mean to writers and bash their efforts in the name of teaching them what they need to know to become skilled. Maybe that’s not technically a scam. It’s just a thing that I don’t think is fair or kind.

What Can an Individual Book Coach Do?

Every individual who runs a service-based business has to decide for themselves what they stand for, and what measures of excellence they are going to uphold, and how they will live out their values in their work.

Every book coach has to figure out how to talk about what they do, and how they do it, and what they promise, and what they don't.

Every one of us will face a skeptic on a committee, in a classroom, online, or on the street and we need to be prepared to not let ignorant and uninformed ideas prevail.

I suggest putting language on your website about what you believe about writing, book coaching, and publishing.

I suggest being extremely clear about the outcomes you promise. Will you help a writer pin down their idea before they start to write so that they feel confident in what they need to do? Will you hold the writer accountable over six months and provide editing, feedback, and guidance while they write 40 pages a month? Will you answer their texts while they are at a conference pitching agents?

I suggest being extremely clear about the kinds of writers you help—and the kinds you don’t. (The guy who questioned whether or not the coach was just going to praise him in order to keep taking money from him? Not someone I would work with. If you are going to come in hot with that kind of attitude, you are not open to an honest exchange of ideas about creative work and you don’t respect what I do.)

I suggest that you sketch out the things you most fear people will say about you as a book coach and write out a script in answer to it. For example:

A writer asks: Can you guarantee ROI (return on investment) on this money I am going to pay you? How many of your clients have landed six-figure deals—and can I talk to them?

You say: I cannot guarantee any ROI. I suggest that you only invest money in working with a book coach if you can lose it. Working with a book coach is an investment in becoming a better writer. It is an investment in becoming well-prepared for a complex and fast-changing marketplace. It is an investment in having a trained professional care as much about your work as you do, which I believe is one of the best ways to do excellent work. But there is no guarantee of any ROI. The fact that you are demanding this kind of guarantee leads me to think we are not a good fit for working together. I wish you luck in finding someone else to help you with your project.

OR

A committee member says: Don’t call yourself a book coach. Everyone thinks that’s scammy.

You say: Wow—that’s quite presumptuous of you. I’m proud to call myself a book coach. I underwent a year of rigorous training to become certified and I know without a doubt that my clients value what I do. Do you have any idea what a book coach actually does?

What I Am Doing

People come after me all the time, asking what academic institution Author Accelerator’s certification is affiliated with—as if an academic institution is the only acceptable measure of excellence. I always answer that there is no academic institution qualified to judge book coaching since it's a brand new industry and an apprentice-based industry. You learn it by doing it—which is why our program has practicums, where students are out there actually coaching writers, and which is why their work must be shown—and shown to be excellent—in order to be certified.

At the very start of my business, I thought I was going to build a national association of book coaches to bring people together and lift us all up. I began to plan out the model, and what was important to me was some measure of competence. I didn’t want people to be able to simply pay and join. How would we know that there weren’t bad actors among us? How could we uphold a standard of excellence?

I started to sketch out what I felt every book coach should be able to know and do, and starting to imagine training levels people would have to pass—so some kind of test. That became the basis Author Accelerator’s book coach certification training.

Our program requires nine to twelve months of work. It requires hundreds of hours of coaching. More than 30% of students don’t pass the requirements the first time they submit their application for certification.

Here are some recent comments from some coaches certified in the last month—people who bring significant experience as writers, editors, and educators:

• “The thought, detail, and rigor that you build into the certification program makes this all the more meaningful.”

• “This is an incredible program and I’ve learned so much and loved every minute of participating in it.”

• “The way this whole process has been structured has been so incredibly helpful and I’m so glad to have been a part of it.”

• “This program is equivalent to a master’s degree.”

That last one comes from a more seasoned coach who made the comment in one of our forums. They have a PhD.

We frequently get comments from our students with MFAs and other writing-based training and certification that our program teaches critical elements about writing, coaching writers, and running a business in the real world they never learned in those programs—which few people say are scammy.

Part of what motivates me to stay in business is that I go out every day to try to uphold our mission of setting a high standard for excellence in this new industry and teach all of our certified book coaches to uphold it, as well.

I think it's going exceptionally well, by the measure of how our book coaches are building such strong reputations and businesses, and how they are helping writers become better at writing, better at navigating the changing publishing landscape, and better at understanding their own creative process.

You can't do that if you are simply scamming people.

What follows is a manifesto that lives on the Author Accelerator About page I wrote it years ago but I stand by every word:

This is what I believe about book writing and coaching:

I believe that the goal of writing books is not only about landing big publishing deals.

Those deals are nice when they come, but it’s not what makes us write. We write because we are called to do it. We write to raise our voice. We write because making art of any kind often makes us feel alive. We write to have an impact on people, to engage readers, to get them to think and perhaps act. We write because it’s something we have dreamed about doing our entire lives and we can’t rest until we do it.

I believe that helping writers do this work — the work of their heart and the work of their soul — is good, noble work.

Helping  people get clarity around their thoughts, share their stories and their perspectives, and invite others to see the way they see the world is one of the ways we can rise above the noise and reveal our humanity.

I believe that good writing can be taught.

There are rare native geniuses who know how to write an engaging book without having to work at it or think about it, but most of the rest of us must learn the craft. Throughout my career, I have had the pleasure of seeing all kinds of people from all kinds of educational and cultural backgrounds figure it out. It takes time and persistence, but it’s a skill that can be learned.

I believe that writing is not a zero-sum game.

Even if someone tries and fails (which means what? They don’t gain a broad readership? They don’t make the bestseller list? Insert any arbitrary metric….) the effort is still more than valuable and enriching. The same could be said for children who take piano lessons. The goal of the work is not always to end up playing at Carnegie Hall. It is a worthy goal to apply yourself to something challenging, to engage with an artistic medium, no matter the outcome. Aiming for big success is good — of course we all want it, and I get up every morning to try to guide clients to it — but it is not the only acceptable outcome.

I believe that it is difficult to make a living from writing alone.

Most writers will never get to quit their day jobs, land a movie deal with Reese Witherspoon, or even go on a great vacation from their earnings. It is for this reason that we don’t guarantee publication or a specific ROI from writing, and I counsel the coaches I teach not to do this, as well. Publishing is too dependent on luck and timing to make that kind of guarantee.

I believe that book coaching can be taught.

Whoever said that only successful writers can teach other writers to write? In my experience, famous writers are often the worst teachers because they are so genius at what they do that they can’t fathom not being a genius. They can explain what they do, but they can’t help others find their own way. There are a lot of good writers who are also good teachers, but the two things are not dependent on each other.

In other industries — sports and music, for example, or executive business coaching — the coach has almost never reached the same level of achievement as the student. No one seems to question this. I believe it is no different in the world of writing. There are great agents and great editors at publishing houses who have never written or published a book. Most of them, in fact, have never written or published a book. They have learned how to help writers do their best work. This is what book coach training does for book coaches.

I believe that book coaching is a viable way for writers and other book lovers to add an additional income stream to the mix of things they do, either as a side gig or a full-time job.

The coaches I have trained are highly educated moms who want satisfying work they can do from home during school hours, MFA graduates who have not yet found a way to monetize their skills, English teachers who don’t make enough in their day jobs to support their families, successful writers who have not yet found a way to earn a full-time living as a writer or who may never find it.

I believe that I am in a strong position to teach others how to be writers and book coaches.

I have spent more than 30 years in the publishing industry and have developed a method that works across genres, across phases of the creative process, across different styles of working and writing. As a result of these systems, I can proudly and confidently teach others to do what I do.

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An Invitation

If any readers of this newsletter encounter anyone who thinks book coaches are scammy (I am assuming none of you believes this, but hey, if you do, this invitation extends to you, too), invite them to contact me here on Substack or email me at contact@authoraccelerator.com email.

I would be happy to talk to them to educate them about the new book coaching industry — and the imperative not to judge something they don’t understand.