A book coach nurtures a book project at three levels: the project management level, the editorial level and the emotional level. It’s different than an editor, who involves themselves only at the editorial level. These three different levels are integral to a book becoming a real thing in the world.

Book coaches have come into being in response to a changing industry. Traditional publishing houses historically have taken care of all the steps to publishing a book, and it was the editor who would walk with the writer all the way through the months and years it took to produce a book. Some editors stayed with their authors throughout their entire careers.

But that was then and this is now. Most publishers don’t have the capacity or resources to give their writers that kind of high-touch treatment. Instead, they now look for turnkey manuscripts—books that already are polished, carve a great narrative arc, and don’t need a lot of additional work. Agents know this too, so they’re increasingly inclined to only accept really strong manuscripts.

It's up to writers to get their manuscripts into top shape. The field of book coaching has grown over the past decade to address this new part of the publishing process. A book coach gives your manuscript the care and attention that it needs to be a strong contender for traditional publishing.

A book coach also fills that gap for people who are self-publishing or hybrid publishing. As the market becomes saturated with indie books, high-quality books stand head and shoulders above the rest.

Writing courses are great, and they teach essential concepts, but they’re not customized to your book project. Editors are also great to show you what’s not working, but a book coach gives you a personal tutor who will walk through your pages with you and show you how to improve your writing.

Here’s what my mentor, Jennie Nash, says about why a book coach is so helpful. This is from the Your Creative Push podcast, episode 279, at 20:12:

“A book is a massively big project. Most people don’t really understand this truth. A book is read in a linear fashion, so most people think that’s the way it gets written. But that’s not true. A book can’t be made in the way it is consumed—there are a lot of if/then propositions, a lot of logic…a lot of game theory, really. Strategy, like chess.

“Writing a book is as complex in many ways as building a house. If you look at a Gantt chart that maps the stages of a big project—building a piece of software, say, or a house—you’ll see that a book project takes the same shape and structure.

“A book coach brings a strategic mindset to tackling that project. A coach knows how to strategically approach the creative process. People tend to talk about “creativity” in hushed tones: those billowing ethereal silver mists of sombre mystery, where authors go to wrestle big ideas down from the clouds and into their typewiters. A book coach knows exactly where everything is inside those clouds. They can break down the complex creative work of ideating, drafting, revising and pitching (or marketing) a book through a replicable process. A blueprint, if you will, or a framework that leads to a tight, defined end product: a book.

“Creators get lost in ideation, and it doesn’t take much to get stuck in the weeds once the words start to flow. A book coach helps to break the disorderly creative process into orderly parts, paving the way to a linear end product.”

Book coaching rates are all over the map, just like life coaches and executive coaches. My rates skew toward the higher end of the scale because of my skill, and the depth of professional experience I bring.

Fiction: contemporary fiction, literary fiction, women’s fiction, some historical fiction, young adult (YA), middle grade (MG), elementary.

Nonfiction: leadership, mentorship, some business, nature, personal development, self-help, wellbeing, biography, psychology.

I coach memoir, too.

I can assess whether your idea would sell in the marketplace.

I have frameworks to help you organize your ideas.

We’ll improve your writing skills through deep practice.

I’ll show you how to design a narrative arc that’s satisfying, and if you’re writing fiction, it’ll also be believable (trickier than you’d think).

I will teach you how to develop emotionally resonant characters that come alive and grab the reader’s heart. (This is key in acquisitions these days.)

I coach you to establish writing routines that work within the constraints of your life.

I’ll help you keep the momentum once you begin drafting.

I’ll share the formula for nailing your pitch to agents, if that’s the way you want to go.

I’ll leverage my knowledge of the publishing industry to position you for your best chance of success.

Like any good coach, I’ll be in your corner cheering you on, holding your hand, drying your tears, helping you plan out your strategy…and making sure you write the best book you can write.

An editor will mark your pages up, make changes, and show you where your writing needs to improve. With an editor, you can see what you did wrong, but you might not know how to fix it. You may emerge a better writer.

With a book coach, you’re learning all the way along the journey. It’s very personalized teaching, with lots of back and forth, lots of practice, and lots of feedback. You will emerge a better writer, which pays dividends in your next book project.

A book is a very big endeavour. Typically, it takes between six months and a year for a writer to complete a draft, sometimes longer. Revision comes after.

If you’re wanting to publish traditionally, you’ll begin querying when you’ve got a good sample to show. The pitching process can take a long time—or a few weeks. No one can predict the market. The time from getting your book signed to seeing on bookstore shelves can be as long as two years.

If you’re intent on self-publishing or hybrid publishing, you can move faster. If you’re organized and disciplined you get your book out there within a year.

Yes. When a book isn’t working—you’re not landing an agent, publishers are turning it down—there’s always a reason. A book coach can quickly discern where things need to improve, whether that’s in your query, your synopsis, your sample chapters or your proposal.

All editorial problems can be fixed, if you’re willing to roll up your sleeves.

Sure. You're paying for expertise.

I don't know the first thing about how to build a bridge, fly a plane or do open-heart surgery. It takes people years of training and practice to develop the expertise to do those things well.

Most people don't know how to write a book. Yes, we all learned how to write in school, but that's where most people's training and practice ends. Writing a book is a multilayered, chess-like challenge not unlike producing a film or developing a videogame.

Your 10,000 hours might be in law, medicine, counselling or joinery.

My 24,000 are in writing.

This is one of the biggest benefits of working with a book coach: you’re not in it alone! You will have a planning partner, and a partner who helps you set and meet your goals. Everything is doable when you’ve got someone else working along right beside you.

No. Nothing in this world—no editor, no agent, no co-author, no book coach—can guarantee a publisher will say yes to your work. What sells is a fickle mixture of zeitgeist, a publisher’s motivations, an agent’s connections, recent trends and even world events. Working with a book coach does not guarantee your book will sell to a publisher.

We can, however, guarantee that you’ll learn the craft of writing more deeply, you’ll learn about yourself, and you’ll write the best book that you can. Hybrid and self-publishing have come a long way, and it’s totally possible to get your idea out there and build your name without a traditional deal.

We’ll start with a discovery call to check for fit: Do you want to work with me? Do I want to work with you?

From there, and from your questionnaire and sample pages, I’ll have enough material to determine what will help you the most, and we’ll talk about the most efficient approach. Sometimes it’s working with a different coach than me.

Of course you can write a book yourself. You can also replace your timing chain yourself. And paint an oil portrait by yourself. And swap out your kitchen countertops yourself. And replace your perimeter drains yourself.

The point is, while it’s possible to do these things, it doesn’t always come easily or naturally. Expecting to write a good book without guidance is kind of like expecting to play in a symphony orchestra with the band training you got in high school.

A lot of people don’t really know how to write a book—a truly good book. (Why would you? I don’t know how to design a freeway bridge.) And quite often, this fact doesn’t land until they’ve had multiple books rejected by agents over a number of years or self-published a book that sold 37 copies.

The truth is, we pretty much all can write a book of some quality or other. Just like most of us can play soccer to some degree or other. But good coaching can make an enormous difference in a player’s technique and ability to play a better game.

I’m looking for people who take full responsibility for putting in the work, and getting it done without needing me to “hold them accountable”. Nagging and reminding aren’t part of my workflow. We make agreements, we set deadlines…and we complete. (Here’s an in-depth exploration of the difference between responsibility and accountability.)

I also select my writers based on their ability to write. You don’t have to be JK Rowling or Daniel Coyle, but I do require a certain base of craft for you to get the most out of our partnership. If your writing needs more training in the craft of writing than I can reasonably provide given the scope of our engagement, I’ll either build you a custom package or direct you to the appropriate courses to learn the basics. There are also plenty of coaches who work with beginning writers.

Typically, we can figure this out with a 10-page sample of your writing.

Because it takes everything in me.

After 25 years of writing articles, reviews, strategic plans, annual reports, blog posts, website copy and books, I know how much work goes into every word that hits the page. Ghostwriting demands nailing the message, the tone, and—trickiest of all—the voice.

For the hired gun, ghosting is a massive undertaking. It demands research, pre-learning, dozens of conversations, formal interviews (recorded and professionally transcribed), lots of thinking and playing and writing and erasing and writing again. Your story takes over my brain for months and months at a time, and I don’t stop looking for how to tell it better. Position it better. Place it better.

Writing a book is emotionally and energetically consuming. Writing a book for somebody else is self-immolatory.

I find LLMs to be really useful for research and organizing, and I don't mind if my writers use them for this purpose.

But for drafting? No. Using AI defeats the purpose of investing in a high-touch book coach whose expertise is in helping writers improve their craft.