Writers’ Rough Drafts – Episode #47 With Laura Gale

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Laura Gale is an author, ghostwriter, and developmental editor, with a background in publishing and marketing. Cutting her teeth as a publicist at Hachette, a global publishing house, she worked on promoting a few titles you may have heard of before, like Twilight and Harry Potter. When she decided that she wanted to travel more, she immediately built an online business, creating health and fitness programs and high-level content for other location-independent entrepreneurs and business people. She also worked for a variety of eCommerce clients, helping them to optimize their own content and strategize their marketing funnels and acquisition process.

In November 2015, Laura began working with those same business owners and entrepreneurs to assist in writing books that helped to establish their expertise in their industries. Since then, she has helped dozens of high-profile thought leaders add “Author” to their lists of accomplishments—and, bonus, the books are well-received and well-reviewed, because they are actually good quality. Her first book, Content That Converts: How to Create a Profitable and Predictable B2B Content Marketing Strategy, came out in October 2016, and her most recent book, How to Write This Book: Write, Publish & Market Your Business Bestseller, just came out in April 2019. She now spends much of her time working with a carefully-vetted group of clients to develop their own ideas and experience into best sellers, while also speaking and leading workshops and group coaching sessions that allow people to DIY her process.

What You’ll Learn About Writing This Week:

• The importance of getting writing done first before you dive into the marketing side of publishing your book
• Why every piece of writing you create needs to have a North Star
• How writing a book isn’t always the mystical, magical experience we imagine it to be
• Why you should always be excited about learning if you want to become a better writer
• The similarities and differences between writing a book, versus a blog post, versus sales copy on a website
• Why it’s okay to write about everything you know in a single book and pull back the curtain on your expertise

Mentioned in This Episode (Links and Resources!):

• Content That Converts: How to Create a Profitable and Predictable B2B Content Marketing Strategy
• Pantsers or Plotters
• Tina Fey’s memoir, Bossypants
• CopyHour course
• How to Write This Book: Write, Publish & Market Your Business Bestseller

You Can Find More of Laura’s Writing on:

• Her website, lauraiswriting.com
• Her latest book, How to Write This Book
• Her Facebook group, Content That Converts
• Her upcoming podcast, The Business of Writing (premiere date TBA)
• Twitter, @laurasgale

Tweetable Quotes From This Episode:

• When writing your first book, “Your audience is ultimately going to want to hear from YOU.” – @laurasgale on #WritersRoughDrafts
• On writing books: “You have to turn up, plan it out … it’s a production process.” – @laurasgale on #WritersRoughDrafts
• “Having a really structured outline to work from can put fears to rest.” – @laurasgale on #WritersRoughDrafts
• “I tell every client, [your book is] a living organism that’s going to change its appearance many times before we get to the end of the project.” – @laurasgale on #WritersRoughDrafts
• “You need to have a touchstone, or I call it a North Star, idea, that is the central point of the book, so as you’re thinking about what fits and what doesn’t fit, you can always go back [to it].” – @laurasgale on #WritersRoughDrafts
• “It takes a while to get good at anything … but ultimately, you get more comfortable and more confident as time goes on.” – @laurasgale on #WritersRoughDrafts
• “The more we read, the better we become, and more options open up to us.” – @laurasgale on #WritersRoughDrafts

Thanks to our Season 4 sponsor: Coworker.com