The Four Bestselling Book Structures

James Taylor interviews Robin Colucci and they talked about The Four Bestselling Book Structures

In this episode, we cover:

• The Four Bestselling Book Structures
• The organized list
• The traditional outline
• The narrative book

Resources:

• Official Website
• 5 Reasons You Might Need A Book Deal

For More of Creative Life Podcast By James Taylor

Artificial Intelligence Generated Transcript

Below is a machine-generated transcript and therefore the transcript may contain errors.

James Taylor
Hi, I'm James Taylor business creativity and innovation keynote speaker. And this is the Creative Life, a show dedicated to you the creative. If you're looking for motivation, inspiration and advice, while at home at work or on your daily commute, then this show is for you. Each episode brings you a successful creative, whether that's an author, musician, entrepreneur, perform a designer, or a thought leader. They'll share with you their journey, their successes, their failures, their creative process, and much much more. You'll find Show Notes for this episode as well as free training on creativity over at Jamestaylor.me. Enjoy this episode.

Hi, it's James Taylor here. Today's episode was first aired as part of International Authors Summit. This inspiring virtual summit reveals the secrets of making marketing and monetizing a best selling book. If you would like to access the full video version as well as in depth sessions with over 40 Best Selling authors that I've got a very special offer for you just go to InternationalAuthorsSummit.com, where you'll be able to register for a free pass for the summit. Yeah, that's right. Over 40 New York Times and Amazon best selling authors, book editors, agents and publishers, sharing their insights, strategies and tactics on how to write and market your first or next best sellers. So just go to InternationalAuthorsSummit.com, but not before you listen to today's episode.

Hey, there is James Taylor and I'm delighted today to be joined by Robin Colucci. Robin Colucci is an entrepreneur, author and writing coach whose clients have been traditionally published by companies including Random House Doubleday, john Wiley and Sons and he hacks. Robin has the some of the best selling books in the world, the ones that sold hundreds of 1000s and even millions of copies, she discovered that there are only four bestseller blueprints or book structures that these bestsellers use. And we're gonna be learning about those today. So first of all, welcome Robert Colucci.

Robin Colucci
Thank you so much. It's such a pleasure to be here, James.

James Taylor
So share with everyone what's happening in your world just now.

Robin Colucci
Well, just now I'm actually getting ready to put on a really exciting event in New York, I'm going to help five very special entrepreneurs, and who want to be authors to draft their book proposal, in order to get a literary agent and a book deal. We're going to draft their book proposals in two and a half days in the second half of the third day, I'm bringing literary agents into the room with them. Wow, you can meet them. And you know, I'm going to lead a panel. So it's going to be really exciting event in early October. So that's what I'm working on is pulling that together.

James Taylor
Very cool. So tell us how did you get into this, this world of being a writing coach, working with authors to help them get their ideas, get their message out into the world? Well,

Robin Colucci
you asked a bid request, and then you probably realize, but I'll do my best to give you the Reader's Digest version here. So really, it goes back to when I was fresh out of college as a journalism major at George Washington University in Washington, DC. And while I was in school, I had been working for The Washington Post as a news aid, which was a really fun job. And I got to meet amazing people. And I even did some freelance writing for the post when I was there. And towards the end of the year, my chairman of the journalism Department called me into his office. And he said, I've recommended you for a job within New York Times bestselling author. And if he offers it to you, I think you should leave the post to take it. My thought, I'm a journalism major, why would I leave the post to go work with some author. But he convinced me to go with an open mind. And I did and I ended up working for a gentleman named David wise, who was a, you know, had written multiple books, including New York Times bestsellers, and he meant he ended up mentoring me for three years, on the entire process of formulating a book idea, writing a book, you know, the whole process with literary agents dealing with publishers in the national publicity campaigns, and I learned all this wonderful stuff about being an author. And I helped him with three books in three years. So and they were all in different genres. So I got a lot of great experience. And then I left to be a newspaper reporter. Hated newspaper reporting turned out at least I hated newspaper reporting in Florida, which is where I ended up having to move in order to do it. And so I I actually left publishing for about 10 years, and I built a personal fitness training business, which I ended up Growing to the point where I had a staff of eight employees a commercial facility, and I ended up selling it. Because after about 10 years, because I realized there was something even though it was really fun, there was something else I was supposed to do. So I thought I was going to be a business coach for wellness professionals. So I started to help people who were in similar professions as fitness, you know, nutrition or massage therapy, or whatever hypnotherapy and I started to help these people with their businesses. And then a very interesting thing happened is some of my clients started to say, Well, you know, what I really want to do is write a book. And I was like, I know how to write a book, I know how to get a book published, let me help you. And so I started getting back into book, you know, I started getting back into the publishing side, at first working with a couple of people who self published, then I help somebody, you know, through the process of getting an actual traditional book deal. And I realized that I felt so much more at home, you know, in this conversation of book writing, and so what I now do is I work with people who want to write a book specifically to grow their business, and, or further their cause, you know, in the world, right, but something that's really tied to their everyday work. And I help them strategically formulate the concept and execute the book in a way that will actually allow the book to help them achieve their goals. And so what I've done is I've taken like, all my publishing background, and added it to my business experiences successful, you know, starting and selling a business, starting growing and selling a business. And so I've kind of merged it all together into this.

James Taylor
This new area, so I'm wondering, as you were kind of going along that journey, you mentioned that first author, you were able to kind of help and also kind of they were a bit of a mentor in that space, as you started moving into the the kind of what you're known for now, whether whether other mentors that you had around you? Or will you really have working with dope printers, primarily working with those authors and learning as much about the process from working with those authors as from from anyone else?

Robin Colucci
Such a great question. I think I thought, you know, he was, yeah, he was like my mentor in terms of, you know, I worked so closely with him for three years. And he really showed me the ropes of the publishing industry. But then later, I had a few business coaches, who helped me tremendously in the other areas, and the other aspects of making my writing career profitable, right, because I mean, writing used to be the shortest way to become a starving artist, you know, I mean, it's, I don't think that's so true anymore, though, these days, because there's such a demand for content now. Because of, you know, the internet, every but everybody has to produce content, even if you're a dentist, you have to find a way to produce content. So the opportunities for writers I think, are better than ever. But what I really did need was that, like, I had a business coach who helped me turn a one on one fitness business into something that was actually valued and saleable, you know, because I had, because he helped me learn how to like systematize it and make it so that it was actually a valuable entity. And then, you know, I had a, another business coach who helped me start to figure out how I could bring together all of that experience, and turn it into something unique. And then I had another business coach, who really changed my whole conversation around sales, and, and money. You know, and like, my comfort level of like, asking people to purchase something from me, you know, high ticket, something from me, and then dealing with my own self esteem around, you know, what it's okay to charge and what I'm worth, and, you know, all of that. And so, that coach helped me quintuple my income in less than two years. So that was just by

James Taylor
just changing that kind of aside, because it's interesting when you sum that, I think, unlike you, as you're going through that journey, whether you're an author or whatever, entrepreneur, and sometimes you have that, those kind of mindsets, and you start digging into them, like why do I believe that and so sometimes, it's just because you like, like, it's like a bowl of tape. You've just picked up things along the way like things from you've heard from family members who they've had a certain attitude towards money. All they've had is, you know, a certain attitude towards certain type of success. Oh, you're only gonna get to well known, you know, because then you feel like you're there's all those things that start to build up so you kind of have to work a little bit deprogramming can become useful. Now you, I've seen you talk before, about this idea of as you were kind of analyzing what it takes to write a best seller book. So, you know, obviously you can anyone can, can write that book. But there's this kind of different thing about taking up to more bestseller status. And you found that there was these four blueprints or four types of book structures. So time and time again, amongst these best seller books. Can you take us through those four and maybe give examples of maybe some of the books you may have read that fit in each of those categories? Yeah,

Robin Colucci
absolutely. So I mean, the reason that I, that I did this as is I started to think about the book writing process, similarly to how I thought about my fitness business when I systematized it, right, and I and I looked at, like, what are the things that always work. And so I really made a study of it. And I and I looked at the, you know, current New York Times bestseller list, you know, on a regular basis, you know, for a while I was looking every week, and I was investigating every book every week that was on that list. And then I started and then I found a Wikipedia page that had the 100 best selling books of all time. And I looked at those books, and I started to see a very clear pattern. And one actually saw a few patterns. One of the patterns was that there were really fundamentally only four ways to structure a functional book, which, and, and lo and behold, all the new all the best seller, all selling books of all time, fit into that category, right? There are no dysfunctional books that are on that list, as far as the best selling books of all time. And so I realized, because I was talking to so many people who've never written a book before. And and really, most of my clients are not writers, right? Most of my clients are excellent experts, but they're not professional writers. And so they don't really know how to structure a book, and they might not have ever written anything, since, you know, the last term paper they wrote, you know? So, in high school or college, right, so, um, So, part of my job is to simplify it and make it easy. And I noticed talking to people, they a big question was, how do I structure the book and they had this impression, like, there might be 1000s of choices, right, of how they were actually going to structure their book. And so to be able to boil it down to actually you don't have 1000s of choices, you have four choices. And I and I'll and I'll preface this by saying and there's no Hybrid's.

James Taylor
So you can take a little bit of that,

Robin Colucci
we don't do a part memoir, part how to, which is a very popular hybrid, but it's not recommended. And I, you know, can actually, if you want, I can tell you now, why not. But, but, or I could save it for later. But, you know, part of why we have a structure for a book is that it, it helps communicate to the reader what they're going to expect. So, if you're writing a how to book, there's a specific structure for that, which I will tell you about very shortly, if you're writing a memoir, there's a different structure for that. And the fact is just fundamentally, some people like to read books that are structured like memoirs. And those people don't always like to read books that are structured, like how tos. So part of part of your decision making and choosing the structure is you want to choose a structure that's most appropriate way to carry your information to your target audience. Based on what the way your target audience likes to receive information, as well as how you want to communicate the information.

James Taylor
Go to and I'm guessing also you when you work with your, your, your clients, you're you're kind of looking at that they're almost at the highest strategic aspect of the start, where you think like, what is that? What do you want that book to do for you? And that's potentially inform the kind of style of book that you're going to be you know, that which one of these four types of books you're going to be writing.

Robin Colucci
Exactly, exactly. Right. So, you know, if, yeah, and there's a way to do it, by the way, you can make any structure work, usually. But again, one of the things you also want to think about is, which one is the easiest for you to write, you know, which one which comes most naturally to you. And which

James Taylor
one enjoy reading most as well. You know, I think that's you that

Robin Colucci
and that, yeah, that could be you know, it's funny, they don't always match Hmm. Um, but like the one you enjoy reading might not necessarily be the one that you're best at writing.

James Taylor
So you might enjoy being like, really recent such heavy will lead to the foretaste of a really big kind of research driven types of books. But actually, that's not your much more narrative typing exactly doesn't work for you.

Robin Colucci
Exactly. It's, it's more about what what feels natural to you, in terms of your writing.

James Taylor
So take us through that very first, blue, blue. Yes,

Robin Colucci
let's, let's get the first one. So I'm going to do that from I'm actually I'm going to, I'm going to do, I'm going to do it from the easiest to write to the hardest. In general, okay. So the easiest one is what I call the organized list. And that is that you have a basic subject that you're going to cover. And then under that topic, you have several sub topics that will, you know, provide various details on it. So the most basic example of something like that would be like 1001 ways to be romantic. Right, so what happens is, you have 1000 1001 ways to be romantic and a 200 page book. So you're only going to write maybe 50 words, you know, or 50, you know, 500 words per entry. So you don't have to write big long chapters. Right? You can, you can, I mean, an organized list, you know, your, your chat, your, your subheadings might be anywhere from 50 words, to or 500 words to five or six pages to 1510 pages, but you're never going to be writing those really lengthy chapters. So you can get out a lot of ideas in a very quick, you know, condensed kind of way. So this is really good for people who are impatient. For people who, who this is good for if you're if your information isn't on it, you know, if you're teaching people, like here's what to get across like a bunch of ideas, but not necessarily an order order of steps. So

James Taylor
you might want to say, quite, it's getting quite tactical, I'm thinking about, I showed you a book I literally just finished reading. And I think each page was each chapter was like two pages, it was like the fastest we know, and speaking to the author, so how do you come up? Is it just because I was just working on making all these notes is Evernote going the whole time, I'm just kind of coming up with these. And I could have actually put out as a series of blog posts, which would be an absolute valid way to do it. But it's way the way my mind worked. And so it's almost like a little like listicles, I guess, you know, in social media. So is it was a very list driven approach.

Robin Colucci
Yeah, exactly. So that's, you know, the shortest list of an organized list blueprint that I've seen is the Four Agreements. That's an organized list blueprint, yes, or agreements. Now one of the one of the dead giveaways that you're looking at a an organized list and not a different kind of structure, which I'll talk about next is that, when you go through the table of contents, you can see that it doesn't necessarily matter the order that you read it in. It's, it's more because like, you could potentially pick a spot, read it, and then whatever you just read has a standalone component to it. Like, you don't need to have read the previous 50 pages to get what you're what you're reading in that two or three page segment.

James Taylor
So that could be like there's a great book called The personal MBA, I think, is Josh Kaufman, which is like just lots of little those. And if you're interested in sales, for example, you can just jump into those ones just about sales, you don't have to read all the previous ones about marketing or distribution, for example,

Robin Colucci
exactly. So you can, you can pick and choose which section of the book that you want to go to. So you know, if you had a book on, you know, ways to deal with your teenager, maybe one part of the book is, you know, how to have tough conversations, you know, then you have like talks about drugs, talks about drinking talks about sex, you know, and then like, another one could be setting boundaries, you know, and you could have and then you could have several bullet points. And so if the if the reader wants to say I want to read about how to set boundaries with my kid around curfews, they could just go right to that sub subheading, or or chapter under that part of boundaries and find it and it wouldn't matter whether they read about having the sex talk or not. Got it. Okay, so that's the organized list. The next day easiest to write is the traditional outline. And the main thing that the traditional outline blueprint and the reason I call it traditional outline is this is what you were taught in high school about the term paper. Write thesis statement, here's what we're going to talk about, you know, Roman numeral one, you know, this is the first point I'm going to make. And then here's the supporting points, Roman numeral two, then supporting point, basic termpaper structure, the way that this really works nicely in, in, in writing books is any how to because anything that includes steps or a process, or so it's either going to go from the first step to the last step, or from the simplest idea to the most complex complex coding. So a good a good example of ideas would be like, the seven habits of highly successful people. So he starts with with basic ideas, like big probably begin with the end in mind, I think it might be the first habit, but then the habits go get progressively more complex. As he leads you through, um, you know, my book, how to write a book that sells you has steps, you know, step one, do this step do this. So, um, those would, would follow that. And so the main difference is, it does matter the order that you read them in, unlike an organized list blueprint, and, um, the chapters will tend to be longer. So instead of having a heading and several shorter chapters, you're going to have, you know, your chapter length is going to average 15 to 25, maybe 30 pages.

James Taylor
So that will lend itself very well. If you're, you maybe come from a, let's say, a training background or creating a lot of online courses where you do you think in that structure, you think, Okay, this is where people are, this is where we need to get them to, I need to create these 20 lessons or 20 modules, and you can think quite, you know, in that type of all, you can take them to that place from easy to difficult or from from A to Zed.

Robin Colucci
Exactly. And the great thing about that, I'm glad you mentioned courses, because one thing that you can do is you can leverage your book writing process, and you can actually develop a course, while you're writing your book. Or if you already have a course, you can use that as a foundation for your book. Um, so, you know, I created a course while I was writing my book, and I, and I sold it a, you know, a couple of times, and then I had an upsell after that, and I made $56,000 on core sales before I finished the first draft of my book. So that's a really powerful.

James Taylor
So basically, you're you're, you're almost you're creating intellectual property, once the core, the core the teaching in the areas, and then you're just choosing different modalities to express those different ways.

Robin Colucci
And, and there's nothing like if you have trouble motivating yourself to write, sell, sell a course to a handful of people. That's expected content every week. Yeah, and somehow, you're gonna find a way to get some content on some paper. And and then you can of course, expand on it, you know, from there.

James Taylor
But so so that that one, I also think of things like, maybe that would be something like that type of format would be, like an artist way, Julia Cameron, which talks about this, I think is a 12 week course. So it's very much a progressive course taking you through those different steps to in her case, you know, unleash your creative power. You know, what, yeah. So so that's that that type of book and as a great structure, I think that's a very,

Robin Colucci
very good structure is the Orman's nine steps to financial freedom, I think Yeah.

James Taylor
Yeah. The steps

Robin Colucci
are all Yeah, so as you can see, you know, these are really perennial bestsellers. Yeah, you know,

James Taylor
so let's take something on the blueprint three, we're getting a little bit.

Robin Colucci
So the narrative is the next easiest. And this one is storytelling. So out of all the four blueprints, the narrative is by far, the best selling book structure of all time, period. Because when you include a narrative, all of a sudden we're pulling fiction, as well as nonfiction.

James Taylor
We're bringing out what kind of Joseph Campbell we're bringing all the classic kind of storytelling things You'd have,

Robin Colucci
right, exactly, yeah. So Joseph Campbell's hero's journey is a great model for how to do this. But basically, you know, to really simplify Campbell's model and make it really simple. So a narrative is basically, you have a you demonstrate what the what the previous normal was of the story, you know, the protagonist, the hero, and then there's a triggering event that changes the normal. Right? That makes it so Dorothy is riding home with toto in her, you know, she's, you know, in her basket or whatever, and she loses toto and there's a tornado. So there's your triggering event, new normal. So the normals over? Yeah, he lands and oz. Now we're a plot point one, right. And then this, there's this escalating tension, right, as the hero tries to, usually they're trying to restore the normal or they're trying to fix the, you know, the new normal or something, but they have a quest. And so there's this rising arc of tension. And then it finally comes to this point of what we call the all is lost moment, where it looks like Dorothy was going to go home, then she gets captured by the witch again. Right, and she's stuck in the pan, it looks like the witch is gonna destroy her. And that's it. Right? And then there's the, the term where we find out, you know, what's actually going to happen. So that's the actual climax. And then, um, you know, so she manages to get back to Kansas,

James Taylor
given the elixir the thing Yeah.

Robin Colucci
And then, and then we have the resolution, you know, she's, she manages to get back to Kansas by clicking her heels. And then she's back in Kansas, and we have the new normal, right, so Dorothy is back. But she's different, she's changed, you know, she's, she's got more awareness,

James Taylor
a transformation has happened in some way

Robin Colucci
of how bizarre everything can be. So this is this is basically the basic structure of a narrative. So it can be a fictional story, and in turn, or it can be a true story. This is where this is the realm of the expos. So this is the realm of all the President's Men by Woodward and Bernstein, you know, which was the book that inspired me to want to be a journalist, you know, back when I was 10. And so, you know, it's the, it's the realm of the memoir, right, where you take a segment of your life and, and, you know, tell the story of that, whether it was a day a year or a 10 year period, or 20 year period. It is the realm of the fable. So if you're a business person, writing a book, and you want to write a fictional book, you can write a fable. I'm, like, revisited

James Taylor
or think like a Michael Gerber,

Robin Colucci
it is a good one. The The Five Dysfunctions of a team is actually a business table, and then Who Moved My Cheese is the business table. So those are three pretty decent selling books. Um, and, you know, you've been you use that story, to demonstrate certain teaching points that you want to get across to your, you know, if your coach or consultant, I mean, a fable can be a great way to put your ideal prospect, like in the mind and body of your protagonist, you know, you make your protagonists, like, if you're a corporate consultant, and you coach CEOs, you make your protagonist, the CEO of a company, yeah, that would look something like a company, you would coach and then you can use that table to really connect with that potential prospect.

James Taylor
And if you're a speaker, or you're a songwriter, you're already living in that world of story. Anyway, that's, that's your, that's your currency that you can live by. So you're probably quite familiar, maybe not delivering in this type of format, but you're quite you're you're always collecting stories, and you're always looking for stories.

Robin Colucci
Yeah. And, and really, let me tell you something, you should be using story in every one of these structures. Because people remember stories. And they don't remember facts and figures so much as they remember stories.

James Taylor
Yeah, there's a reason why those these things have been repeated time and time again over 1000s of yours because they're in that format that that format, which is then they're not and maybe Nestle there. Yeah. So you kind of got this this idea of the story arc, and I know you talked about this idea of The three act in that last crack a classic type of narrative form as well. So when you when you see that in a in a book like this a nonfiction, that's a type of business book, How did the three acts normally present themselves? What is in each of these types of acts?

Robin Colucci
Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, it depends so much on what the book is about. Right. And is it a memoir? Is it a fable? You know, but but really, um, you know, is it an expose a, um, you know, like, in all the President's Men, I mean, the, the triggering event for the protagonist, who was the reporter, was when he was just at a normal court hearing, you know, just like, just at the district court, just covering what was going on that day. And he saw them haul in like, a bunch of ex CIA guys. And he was like, Whoa, what, what just happened? And then he decided to start digging. So that was the plot point, one there. And then, you know, that led to the resignation of a president, right. So, um, but, but really, it's, it's, first, you've got to decide the scope, and what what book you're writing, who it's for, and while you're writing it, you know, what do you want your reader to do with you after they read the book? is a very important question. And if you're going to write a memoir, you need to be really sensitive to that question. Because, listen, a lot of all of us have been through something, right? And so just, but a lot of times when you go through something, especially when it's particularly difficult, people around you will often say, Oh, my gosh, it's so amazing how you handle that it's so amazing that you survived that you should write a book. Well, that might be true. But if you're a business person, especially but I'd say for any person, but especially if you're a business person, you need to ask yourself, How do I want to be known. So I'll get vulnerable here for a minute, I'll give you a really good example. So I went through in 2008, well, 2006, I got involved with the wrong man. And in 2008, I ended up in a bankruptcy. And I lost everything right, I lost, I mean, not everything, I lost everything material, I lost my home, I lived in an investment property, two cars. And, and all my net worth was wiped out between between the bad decisions I made as a result of that relationship and the market crash, my net worth went from, like a million dollars to negative 500,000 in a year and a half. Not a great time for me. And I quickly wrote a book, just on a lark, because some of my other author friends, we decided to do a four day challenge. And I see if we could write a manuscript in four days. And so I just decided, so I wrote the story. And I called it I take the right, how to spot a romantic financial predator and what to do if you're already involved. And I put it up, you know, on Clickbank, I think it was or something like that. And, you know, it didn't do anything. So I didn't promote it. Because after I did like four radio interviews on it, I realized that every time I talked about it, I felt horrible. I was still in, in the mass, I hadn't pulled myself out, you know, yet. So, I mean, it took me a few years to rebuild. And, and so. And I realized very quickly, after I had written this book, this is not how I want to be known, I don't want to be known as the woman who made you know, who fell in love with the wrong guy and made a lot of stupid choices. That's not my brand. And I'm not looking to devote my life to helping people avoid this kind of thing. Um, so it's not how I want to be known. So even though it was a good book, you know, I mean, a quick read, but but I just, like pulled back from it, because I was like, This doesn't make any sense for my brand. And I ended up you know, a couple years later writing how to write a book that sells you, right, which is my brand. And I'm not obviously ashamed of what I went through, but it doesn't need to be the book that I write and how I'm known.

James Taylor
But you think that that writing that book, even though knowing what you know, now, you wouldn't have to put that out because it's not it's not on brand with with who people know you you today and why they come to you why they why they seek your advice and help. But do you think it was actually it was almost a cathartic or useful experience to kind of go through? And maybe it just kind of you can go down yet. Okay, now

Robin Colucci
that I wrote it, I'm glad I wrote it because it helped me to see how where I was responsible, which helped me take my power back, right, because I got me out of victim mode, which I think was really important. Um, But in terms of writing for publication, if you're going to write a memoir, or you're going to tell your story of something difficult that you went through and turn it into a how to, like, hide it. But you really want to be thinking about how do you want to be known. If you're in if you're going to write a memoir about a difficult thing that you went through, I would say the test is, can you tie it to your business? is it relevant to your business? I didn't really feel like what I went through was relevant to what I actually do. Yeah, well, I would have kept it. Right. And then, um, are you telling it from an empowered place?

James Taylor
Oh, have you are you still too in it? You know, we think about, you know, people that have been in, they say, companies and some terrible things have happened in that companies. And they're in a position of kind of repositioning rebranding themselves and going out into the world. And then kind of the, there's still Goldust tension there with that thing, and they feel a need to maybe excise it, but maybe, but

Robin Colucci
exactly, if you if you start writing a memoir, and you're reading it out loud to yourself, and you hear yourself blaming anybody, you're not you have not taken your power back, you're not being 100% responsible for your experience, and you need to put it down until you're ready to do that. Because there's nothing more unappealing than reading a memoir by someone who is blaming everyone else, and is not being responsible for their role.

James Taylor
So having said that, we've come up that that blueprint three, which is idea of the the narrative form with which has is incredibly powerful, but also isn't can be isn't, maybe it could be a more difficult one. But now we're going to go to blueprint four, which is the is the

Robin Colucci
wrong thing, or this is I think this is the hardest one to do. Because it's the essay. And I think this requires the most writing skill. Because what you are doing this is also the other thing you learned in English class, where you have a thesis, where you you have a theory, and then you proceed to write to prove your thesis. And then you usually remind people what the thesis was, and then you're out, right? And this would be Malcolm Gladwell does this all day long. So the tipping point is an essay. Blink is an essay, outliers is an essay. And he just is very, very good at it. And when you now, it's easy. If you want to write short essays and make it an organized list, you can do that. And that's not hard, because then those are just a few pages. But to make an entire book and essay really requires a substantial, I think writing muscle to be able to hold that thesis and weave together all your different arguments and evidence. I mean, just if you read one, Malcolm Gladwell book, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about how he looks in all these different places, and brings in this evidence. And he does interviews, he does, you know, looks at research. And then he weaves it all together to formulate this overall position of you know, this is how massive I think

James Taylor
we were talking earlier about in the books you enjoy. books you want to write, I mean, that's a book that can sell but I love reading that style of book, but it's not the style that I would want to write out into the world because i think i think those books, definitely they, they they're in the Zeitgeist, they get all the obviously there's a lot of critical acclaim because they can change the paradigm, you know, they can change have the very culture those books when they're when they're done really well. But, as you say, it requires masses of skill to that. Malcolm Gladwell, he hasn't come from he, obviously New York Times, kind of writer and

Robin Colucci
yeah, I mean, he's, like the professional writer. I mean, I think like Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth would be another example of right, like, he's making a case. You know, and you have to get people like the whole point of making your case is you're trying to convince this massive readership to look at the world differently to change their paradigm. And it's, it's a much bigger, yeah. undertaking. And I'll tell you, you know, I think that the people who pull this off, don't generally do this alone. So I want anybody who's thinking of doing an essay to recognize, um, you know, people who write this kind of book usually have at least one researcher, if not three, or four or five

James Taylor
is very is a research heavy. So this is my task. We've got, we've gone through these four blueprints, we're just gonna repeat we've got the organized list, the traditional outline the narrative With a narrative form, and then finally, this essay, and I think that's a phenomenal way, just kind of helping break it down. Now, as I go back into my library, I'm going to sit and start like, Oh, that's an that's a narrative. And that's, that's the ones and but I think it's great. I think, you know, for a lot of you in my class myself in this is well, I like to understand almost like thinking about the structure before I'm kind of writing the content content, I find it easier for other people maybe work in different,

Robin Colucci
I highly recommend that if you just start writing without a structure, you will run into trouble, you will not, you will not finish before you run into trouble. And it could be it could require massive rewrites, if not a complete rewrite, to fix it. So definitely nail down the structure for now. See,

James Taylor
this is the stuff that you work with your clients on helping them figure out that structure, figure out the big kind of strategic goals for working with them taken all through the whole process of this as well. And as we start to finish up just now, I'd love to know, just a couple of quick questions. What are there any tools or apps or things that you think are very useful for writers, especially writers? This is their first book putting their first book out into the world? Is there any apps or tools that you would recommend?

Robin Colucci
Well, I have to say, if you're writing a book to grow your business, I do recommend my book. I know it sounds really lame and self promoting, but how to write a book that sells you is written specifically for people like you. So I strongly encourage that. I think that, you know, I honestly, I can't say that I've really found an app that I'm in love with. I think that writing, you know, I think the best app that you have as a writing tool is just when you've written something, read it back to yourself out loud. And if it if it makes sense, it'll make sense to your ear. And you'll hear you'll hear more errors than you'll see. Because when you read what you've written, your mind will fill in the blanks.

James Taylor
Go on it. And if you do recommend a book and not one of your own books. Yeah. Because maybe on the on the on the craft, for example of writer one, what would that be? One of them I

Robin Colucci
have a couple favorites on writing by Stephen King is his memoir. And there's another book that I love that is not by a well known author, but he's somebody I know from when I lived in Colorado, it's called joy writing by Ken amdahl, and that's k e n n, AM da H L and then there's an there's if you want to prove the craft of your writing, um, there's, there's another book that I think is kind of interesting. It's called How to Read like a writer by Francine prose, which I think I just love that her last name, let's give her a

James Taylor
good name.

Robin Colucci
Tenzin, it's so great. Um, and that's a really good one.

James Taylor
We're gonna put all of these here so people can go and check out all those all those books as well. Um, and final question for you. Before we can wrap up, I'd love to know, if you had to start again, have you got to restart tomorrow as an author, you have all the skills, all the knowledge you've acquired over the years, but no one knows you, you know, no one, you have to completely restart. What would you do? How would you restart things? For me

Robin Colucci
personally, it would, it would really be about networking. Because I get most of my clients through showing up, you know, networking going, going to the right events, meeting the right people, and referrals. So for me, I would just be really focused on finding one or two places that I should be, you know, four to eight times a year and I probably could grow my business and in a fraction of the time.

James Taylor
I never been Can you be meeting with people?

Robin Colucci
Yeah, I wouldn't it Yeah, exactly. Like, you know, there's now I found a couple of, you know, places that I go. But it's like that took a while like if I if I just known that right away and just leaned into that and not gotten distracted. I think that would be great. But But I want to just quickly add because Because really, if you're building your business, you need to be where your ideal clients are. And if you just focus on getting super clear on where they are, and then you just make sure that you're in that same space like that could be Facebook, that could be Twitter, that could be you know, at a at a highly exclusive conference somewhere that could be anywhere that could be at a local networking event, you know,

James Taylor
fish or fish where the fish off,

Robin Colucci
but that's the key And then just make sure you're there as much as you can be.

James Taylor
And then my final question for if people want to connect with you learn more about your coaching the work that you do with clients, and connect with you, where's the best place to go and do that?

Robin Colucci
Well, I would say it's at Nita book deal.com. I don't email I'm not one of those crazy, I hate getting inundated with emails, so I don't do it to my people. Um, so you're not going to hear from me a ton. But I will let you know what I'm up to I send out you know, if I write a new blog post, I'll let you know if I post a new video, I'll let you know. If I'm hosting another really, you know, whenever I host a cool event, I'll let you know. But I don't do a ton of them. So that'll get you in the loop. So that's what I'd recommend.

James Taylor
Well, we're gonna have that link there as well. Robert, thank you so much for coming on today that I think it was a really enlightening just talking about those those different types of books or different types of structures. Thank you so much for coming on. today. I wish you all the best with your future events in your future writing.

Robin Colucci
Thank you so much. I wish you the best as well.

James Taylor
If you're interested in living a more creative life, then I'd love to invite you to join me as I share some of the most successful strategies and techniques that high performing creatives use. I put them all together in a free downloadable ebook that you can get by going to Jamestaylor.me. That's Jamestaylor.me. To get your free downloadable ebook on creativity.

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