’At the lowest end of what a business book could be is, yes, it’s a calling card… [But] what if your book was transformational?’
Parul Bavishi – editor, former literary scout, co-founder of the London Writers’ Salon and host of the Writers’ Hour podcast – knows something about the realities of writing and the power of creative community.
Writing can be a lonely business, but in the LWS’s regular ‘Writers’ Hour’ Parul has seen the extraordinary power of ‘body doubling’ – simply watching others write can be all the encouragement and support a writer needs to get unstuck. And there are even more potent aspects of community such as accountability and critique that can take your writing to the next level.
We also talk about the genius that is the five-minute outline, the agony that is finishing and shipping a book, and how to ensure that your nonfiction book clearly sets out (and fulfils) a promise of transformation to the reader. Because if you’re going to put all that time and emotional labour into writing a book, you might as well make it one that changes people’s lives.
Writers’ Hour: https://writershour.com/
London Writers’ Salon: https://londonwriterssalon.com/
Parul on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/parulbavishi/
Alison on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/the-alison-jones/
The 10-day Business Book Proposal Challenge: www.proposalchallenge.com
Alison Jones: I am here today with Parul Bavishi who is an editor and a former literary scout. She’s the co-founder of the London Writers Salon and the daily Webby-nominated Writers’ Hour, which has gathered over 30,000 writers over the last few years. She co-hosts the London Writers Salon podcast and she’s working on her first short story collection, so she’s in the weeds with the writing as we speak.
So first of all, welcome Parul. It’s lovely to have you here.
Parul Bavishi: Thank you. I’m honoured to be here. Lovely to speak to you and connect with the audience.
Alison Jones: Twenty five minutes of talking about writing, what could be better? Tell me first about London Writers Salon. What is it? Why does it exist? What’s great about it?
Parul Bavishi: Yes, well, so the London Writers Salon, we’re London by name, but actually we are now global, we are a global writing community. We are a space for writers to do the work, to write, show up and write. That’s one big part of what we do. We also have a behind the scenes community where writers connect with each other.
You know, learn craft, find each other, because actually having a community of writers to connect with is also incredibly important in a writer’s journey. We’re all about helping the writer. Really, and I say this, it sounds cliched, but achieve their creative dreams.
Because in the end, writers have some kind of burning desire, something that they really want to do. It may be to be published, it might be maybe just for a smaller subset of people, and maybe it’s just for themselves. But we want to address that desire and help them reach that.
Alison Jones: And that idea of community, it’s so interesting, isn’t it? Because writing is a solo sport, at the end of the day, I mean, that’s not always true actually, people write in collaboration, but for most writers, they’re writing alone. There’s a lot of time alone. What do you think is the benefit of finding community within that? And does it ever, let’s be honest, tip into just talking about writing rather than writing as being something that’s much more fun to do?
Parul Bavishi: Let’s see, yes, that’s interesting. And talking about writing is one of those things that you can definitely procrastinate on, right? You can definitely spend time procrastinating, but what’s really interesting, and this is what we’ve found and other sectors of industry have found this too, is this idea of body doubling.
That actually, a bit like when you go to the gym and you see someone doing a great workout, you might be inspired to work out yourself, if you come to Writers’ Hour, which is one of our flagship products, things that we do, it’s writers’ hour, a silent writing session. You come along and in any one session you probably have 200 to 300 writers writing.
And I’ve had writers, someone the other day said, the first time I came, I just came and I watched writers write and I just needed to like see, oh, that’s it. It’s like whether this person has published 10 books or has just started, the act is the same. To sit and to write. I’m not alone. And when you, and I do this too sometimes, I mean, I’ve joined writers hours from all sorts of locations. As a host, I have to be somewhere a bit more formal. But if I’m joining as a writer, I can join from anywhere.
And sometimes I just need the comfort. Maybe I’m having a bad day and maybe I’m just journaling or maybe I just really have to crack through this piece that I have to work on, and I just want a bit of comfort. So I know that there are writers there and you start to find familiarity in the way that you do when you’re at university and you’re sort of in your, you know, you have breakfast with the same people day after day. You might not speak to them a lot, but they become quite familiar and you start to have this sense of connection with them, and that’s what happens in Writers’ Hour.
So, going back to this question of does community really happen with writers, do they actually need it? I mean, technically no, in the sense of, of course you can write on your own, but a lot of writing is mindset. Where you can get help is knowing that there are other writers just like you, being able to turn to them and often it’s the unblocking that can be helpful.
So, there’s a writer recently who published, she had a book published, it was fiction. She went to an indie press and she said if it wasn’t for, we assigned her a pod buddy, like a sort of partner, critique partner, she said it wasn’t for Sandra. I would never have written this because I was sending her pages every day. We were critiquing each other’s work. And so I think community can be transformational.
Alison Jones: Yes, so there’s so many dimensions to that. There’s the emotional aspect of community, as you say, just that sense of not feeling alone or feeling with your people, but that also, the structure and the accountability are really coming out there as well. It’s not just, you can just sit and watch people write and feel the energy from that. But actually, if you want to lean into it, you really can use it to move your writing along, to get feedback, to get all the positive things that you might not get if you’re not working with a writing coach.
Parul Bavishi: Yes and actually what’s interesting is because we’re about to launch this course later in October and it’s around finishing a book. And I’ve been thinking a lot around, well, what are the blockers for people finishing a book? And that includes me.
For some people it’s accountability. So if you are a fan of Gretchen Rubin and sort of the tendencies, she talks a lot about, you know, how exactly how do you stay accountable? Some people, and actually I think it’s a larger proportion than not, are obligers like me. They need someone to be accountable to. So that could be a block, in which case you might need something like Writers’ Hour or critique partner or buddy, someone who knows that you’re going to be submitting pages.
It could be structural, it could be that you do sit down and write, but actually your struggle is, you just are constantly lost. It feels like a mess. You’re in a maze. You don’t know where your book is going, in which case you probably need a one-on-one coach. You need someone who can like guide you or you might just need to talk it out with somebody.
The other blocker might simply be time. You just cannot find the time in your day. Life is overwhelming for you. Like you’ve got so many things. You’re running a business, you have a family, you have obligations. And so you need, at that point, you need somehow to find a routine to build tiny habits, whatever that might be for you, and to really remind yourself of what this is for.
And so those are some of the blockers that I see and I think community can address. Community coaching, there’s a whole sort of backdrop of options that can address those issues.
Alison Jones: I think often as well, going back to that sort of emotional content, there’s fear, recognized or not, and that, particularly at the end when you have to ship, you know, you spend months, years working on your manuscript and it’s just you and your manuscript and it’s precious and nuanced and you know, you sort of love it and hate it all at the same time, but the point at which you have to put it into the world and let other people judge it, that’s terrifying, right. How do people get over that?
Parul Bavishi: Yes. I don’t know if you ever get over it. I think it’s a mindset shift.
Alison Jones: They don’t. Okay.
Parul Bavishi: I don’t think you ever do. I don’t think you ever do. I think, I was actually listening to, it’s a writer that I admire, he’s written nonfiction, Tim Grohl. He runs a story grid, which is, I think is a really wonderful editorial system. And they do courses to help writers. But he was talking about how you, to some degree, you let it go. It becomes, it’s no longer yours, there’s only so far that you can get involved. The point in which you’ve finished and now publish it, it is open to interpretation.
And I think it’s really hard to do that as a writer. And the only solution is to keep writing and to write your next book. Yes, I don’t know, I can’t think of a single writer who I’ve ever spoken to who said, God, I felt amazing. it was perfect. It shipped. It was exactly what I wanted it to be. I wouldn’t change a thing, never.
Alison Jones: It never happens.
So there’s different people involved in this. As I say, writing can feel very lonely. We’ve talked about the idea of community and working alongside other writers. But the other sort of stakeholders in this, I mean, clearly there’s the reader and for non-fiction particularly, the reader is everything. You know, unless you are really clear about who you’re writing for and what they’re struggling with, you know that your book is likely not to land. I think that’s possibly less important for fiction, not my field of expertise, but another stakeholder in this is whoever it is that’s going to help you get this book out into the world.
And so let’s take the sort of traditional publishing route. You’ve obviously, you’ve worked as an agent, as an editor in the past, thinking about it from that perspective, what are the things that writers need to be aware of as they grapple with the writing of their book, if they are going to make it attractive to those stakeholders?
Parul Bavishi: Yes, that’s interesting. In nonfiction, traditional publishing is definitely an option for nonfiction, but as you are probably, maybe agree with self-publishing definitely lends itself very well to nonfiction in a way that might be a bit tougher for fiction, not all fiction.
So, and just a bit about my background. I was an editor in traditional publishing. I’ve been a freelance editor for many, many years, and I was a literary scout, which basically meant I scouted on behalf of foreign publishers in the UK market. So I would have to read all the books. It’s actually manuscripts that were circulating in the ecosystem, and then advise the foreign, I say foreign, like Italian, French, German, American clients, what was coming up. I loved it, probably one of my favorite jobs ever. Exhausting and surrounded by manuscripts, but so much fun.
Alison Jones: Yes, sounds great.
Parul Bavishi: Yes, although there was a point where I was reading before, I think it was London Book Fair or Frankfurt Book Fair, one of those book fairs, I, any spare moment I had, there was like my Kindle just came up like that. So I was brushing my teeth really, honestly any moment in time I was reading. But yes, gatekeepers are interesting.
So, what do agents want? What do editors want? That’s like the question that we all wonder about. And for context, I love submissions because I guess I was involved in that. I saw a lot of those submissions circulate and we do something called Agent Hour at the Salon, the London Writers’ Salon, where we bring in an agent and let them live critique your submission.
And so I’ve heard a lot of what agents are saying in today’s market, and that’s the disclaimer I’ll always say, whenever you listen to anyone talk about this industry, unless they literally have their finger in the river of submissions right now, they’re going to be slightly out of date.
So I have not been in the industry myself for a long time now, so my knowledge of the nonfiction market will be slightly out of date, fairly out of date. As a reader, I know, but obviously agents and editors are looking a year and a half into the future when they think about what they want.
But what’s interesting with what agents say is ultimately they are simply readers who have a pulse on what’s going on. They’re not always correct. They simply have a viewpoint, they may miss the best thing. It’s possible. They’re simply people who love books and actually make, another mindset thing that’s really interesting to think about is agents make their money through commission.
So they are trying to sell, they’re trying to get behind projects that they think has legs, that can sell, but they can get behind it. They can persuade the editorial teams and sales and marketing and the publishing houses to actually buy. So they’re looking for something that they think lands with the market.
Now, what lands with the market? Okay, so, I always advise writers when they’re trying to think about, how they might position their book, how they might think about their book, is to firstly look at the market. If you haven’t already really simply go to Amazon, go to your bookstore, go to a library, have a look at…
Alison Jones: …amazing how many people don’t, though.
Parul Bavishi: Right. Exactly. Look, and have a look and see yes, just like, what is hitting the top of the charts in the nonfiction section.
Alison Jones: And actually booksellers are a great resource here as well, aren’t they? Go into your local bookshop, talk to the booksellers in that section. What’s hot, what’s not? What are they looking for? What’s missing?
Parul Bavishi: And then more importantly, think about where your book will be in that space. What kind of reader is looking for what you are creating? So, going back to the question, what do the gatekeepers want? They want books that sell.
What books sell? My opinion on this is books that transform. So, I would’ve said a long time ago when someone asked me, oh, should I write a nonfiction business book?
I would say, yes, great. I mean, you can absolutely do it. It can be a calling card, a business card. You know, we’ve heard that language and I think of it differently now. So yes, at the lowest end of what a nonfiction business book could be is, yes, it’s a calling card. It’s a way of extending your reach. That’s great.
But actually at the top end. Where I think you, I invite everyone, including myself to play in, is what if your book was transformational? What if the book that you created, and I don’t mean to add pressure here, but it’s more the idea that there is something in you potentially, or an idea you have, that you believe the reader should know.
So it’s a business, nonfiction book, you believe that you have some knowledge that could transform the reader, what is that? What is that promise that you think you can deliver? And think about the journey that that reader will go through. That is what I believe everyone is looking for. And I recently came across a book, and this is the type of book I think of as transformational.
And if it’s helpful, I can go into, I have a lot of ideas or thoughts on structures of different types of nonfiction books.
Alison Jones: Oh, we are very much here for that
Parul Bavishi: Okay, cool. So I recently sent around five, six people a text and it was you really need to read this book. This has blown my mind. And it was a book by Ben Hardy, Benjamin Hardy’s an American writer. He’s prolific on the internet, but he’s also written a number of non-fiction business books, essentially, although we can debate what it means for a book to be business versus just a self-help book or a sort of a nonfiction.
Alison Jones: The lines are porous. Very, Yes.
Parul Bavishi: Exactly and so the book is called The Science of Scaling, and there’s a whole bunch of, he’s written a whole slew of books with another guy called Dan Sullivan.
There’s like 10 X Not Two X, The Who Not the How, The Gain, Not the Gap. Ultimately, all those books and I bought them all in quick succession. I’ve literally spent like 50, 60 pounds just buying his whole backlist because each one has transformed me. It’s an idea that he is bringing to life with examples, with a how to, with narration and with some research.
Another way to think about those books, and not all books have to be this, it is a big idea book. It’s what Shawn Coyne at the Story Grid would call a big idea book, meaning it’s a bigger concept and it has those components. It has some form of academic research, like facts, research, you know, yes, evidence. It has how to aspects, like how do I practically apply this to me, it has narration, meaning it’s like fiction. It takes me on a transformational journey.
And that combination can be an absolute killer. And I think about, not all books have to be that. So, think about, there are books that are one of those silos. So I was actually looking at The Creative Act, right?
So Rick Rubin, amazing book.
Alison Jones: Yes, beautiful.
Parul Bavishi: What kind of book is that? Like, it’s in a way, I could say it’s a, I mean, Matt and I, so my co-founder and I, have been reading it and we are business partners, so is it maybe like a business book? Maybe.
The one thing I’ll say is I probably think it’s a narrative book. I don’t think it’s a big idea book. There are big ideas within it, but I think it’s a narrative, nonfiction book. So that’s what I think of when I think of what does the reader want, what does the agent want, what does the editor want? We all want transformation.
Alison Jones: And that articulation of the promise of that transformation, I think is really critical as well. Because often you get people who’ve got great concepts, great ideas, but they haven’t quite articulated that the point behind which they can land all that good stuff. So I think that the marketing, if you like, is just as important.
And frankly, let’s be honest, more important in many cases than the content that you are delivering.
So, have you any tips for people as how to articulate so that that really lands with the reader and with the agent or the publisher or whatever.
Parul Bavishi: Well, so I agree with you that marketing is really important, but actually it’s much easier to market something that delivers that promise, that is that promise, than something…
Alison Jones: …need the substance. Yes.
Parul Bavishi: Right, exactly. So, I have this one thing I want to share because I really think it’s really interesting to think about any nonfiction book this way.
And, this will lead me to what I want to say about marketing. So there’s an editor I really admire. She’s a friend of mine. She’s also ex Story Grid, ex Ascribe. And she has this five minute outline. She does some stuff with us at the Writers’ Salon. Her name’s Brannan Sirratt. She specializes in nonfiction. She’s one of the best nonfiction editors I know.
She has this concept called the five minute outline, and she asks you five questions to help consider your business book. So if you are, actually, you could apply this to a blog post as well, an essay. But if you are thinking about writing a nonfiction book, you might ask yourself these five questions. The first one is, why do we care? What is that inciting concern that has got us, that will hook me in? And so with this idea of 10 X not Two X for example, that Ben Hardy, he’s basically saying, look, you are living a slower life because you’re doing incremental gain versus actually going for the bigger picture. The thing that actually you really want is at the 10 x level, and so the inciting concern is that you are living, you are not living at your full potential.
The next question is, what’s in our way? And that’s the progressive revelations. Like, what are these things that you haven’t realized that you are not doing, and that’s in your way that means you’re not resolving this inciting concern.
So first one is why do we care? Second one is what’s in our way? The third one is, what’s the key takeaway? What’s this crisis checkpoint? And so in the case of 10 X not Two X, he’s basically saying you need to live. You need to live your life by the 10 X principle, it actually will free you up. It will give you more time and space and you will be happier. And throughout this, he’s giving examples like case studies of people who are stuck, stuck, stuck. And now we start. So this is all fix this like fiction, right? This is a fiction journey.
The next question is what makes us believe? Like what is the climactic shift? Like, what will actually transform me as the reader to really believe what he’s saying? He’s told me that there’s a concern. He’s told me why, giving me revelations. He’s explained to me what the takeaway is, but now he has to convince me. And so it’s what makes me believe in his case. He starts to give me solid examples of how this transforms people’s lives, this idea, this concept, what it looks like in play.
And then finally, what’s on the other side? What’s that resolution? On the other side is the life of someone who’s applied this principle.
And so those questions, why do I care? What’s in our way? What’s the key takeaway? What makes us believe in what’s on the other side? Is a really interesting way to think about your book. And then in a way, in your marketing material, you are touching upon this. You are on your back cover copy. On the way you talk about your book. You would essentially be drawing this out.
Alison Jones: It is such an interesting example as well of how the emotional and the intellectual are particularly woven together in a nonfiction book proposal, it has to have substance, has to have credibility, it has to have the evidence, you should say, but ultimately, if I don’t care, if it doesn’t make my life better, if it doesn’t take away some pain. I don’t care enough to put my hand in my pocket and buy the book.
Parul Bavishi: Yes, absolutely. Another interesting, so marketing, there’s a guy called Tim Grahl, going back to Tim Grahl. Story Grid. I was listening to him talk on a podcast about a book that he’s just released, and he was saying, my ambition is to get, not to have 10,000 people buy the book, but to have 10,000 people read the book.
The problem is not people buying. It’s not, of course, I mean, we do want people to buy it, but the issue is you want that virality. You want someone to have read it, loved it, and recommend it,
Alison Jones: Yes, because otherwise you are not going to get more sales.
Parul Bavishi: Exactly. And he was talking about writers that he’d spoken to who had their books pirated.
He’s like, in the territories where the books pirated, we got more sales.
Alison Jones: Absolutely. It’s an aspect of marketing, isn’t it? If nobody’s pirating your book, that’s dreadful news.
Parul Bavishi: Right, right. Exactly. So when I think about if I were to try and promote a nonfiction book, I would be giving away as many copies as possible, as many as I could. I’d be trying to get people to read it and recommend it. And I’d be trying to think of what my strengths were. So obviously every author’s different in terms of like what they’re capable of because it’s, for me, in my mind, it’s a year long project to promote, to like launch your book, not a couple of months. It’s like, what can I sustain? Am I more of a talker? Would I like to go on podcasts? Am I someone who likes in-person events? Well then I’d go around the country and do some in-person events, whatever it takes to just basically spread awareness.
Ben Hardy, when I interviewed him ages ago, he was on like 200 podcasts. Something insane.
Alison Jones: That’s insane. Certainly what you can’t do is chuck your book over the wall into the world and run away and hide that. That’s not a tactic.
Parul Bavishi: Exactly. And but again, I’m conscious that for some people it’s like, you know what? I just want to write this business book because I believe in it and I want to show it to my clients. And that’s absolutely fine too, but, and then maybe some of the bigger questions to ask yourself when it comes to like marketing and even planning your book is like, what do I really want from this?
Like, what would my dream state be here that in a two years time, my book has been out for two years, what has happened as a result? Is it that I get speaking gigs? You might not need it to go viral in that case, is it that I’ve transformed X number of lives and I have a lot of inbound inquiries way beyond my reach, then maybe you need to think about how you’re going to spread that message.
Is it simply, I want to use it as a calling card and I want to be able to, you know, I want to give a copy to my client and have just extended my reach in the known areas? That’s fine too. In which case you might not have to worry in the same ways.
Alison Jones: Exactly. We don’t all have to be Wall Street bestsellers. I think just knowing that, or New York Times bestsellers, just knowing that this is okay, this is what I’m aiming for. That’s going to impact how you design the writing of the book and who you’re writing for, but also, particularly the expectations around marketing, how much you’re going to spend on that marketing, how much time you’re going to give to it, and so on.
Because actually, for most nonfiction, particularly business book writers, the return on investment is never going to be in the sales of the book, actually. It’s going to be, as you say, those inbound inquiries, those speaking gigs, you know, whatever. But the quality of the book, luckily, is directly correlated with the quality of the inbound stuff that you’re going to get as a result of it. So, yes.
I always ask my guests Parul for their best tip, and I feel a little bit greedy actually, because we’ve done nothing but give people really great tips. But if I were to say to you, what’s the sort of the one thing, if they take nothing else away, what one thing would you want somebody listening, who’s perhaps at the start of their nonfiction book writing journey, what would you want them to take away?
Parul Bavishi: I think for me it’s down to your why. The thing that’s going to sustain you throughout this entire process is why am I doing it? And really make sure you’re doing it for reasons that you believe in, that you want, because it’s not easy. It’s not to say it’s not worth it. I think it’s a really wonderful endeavor to try and reach more people with your ideas.
But what does this mean to you? Why do you want people to hear from you? And if you start going, if you listen to this and start going to yourself well, I don’t know, maybe I don’t, maybe there’s no reason, I would ask you to think about what do people come to you for? what do people, you know what, you really should talk to her or you really should talk to him about that, because he, she knows everything about that topic actually. And, you’ll probably have people say this to you all the time, like, I really love the way you talk about this. God, I feel that’s really smart. I hadn’t thought of it that way. That’s amazing.
Alison Jones: Yes.
Parul Bavishi: And that’s what the transformation, that’s the thing that you’re transforming.
Alison Jones: Yes, and that’s the information, isn’t it? That’s the data you need. It’s like, not what I think is important for these people, but what they recognize as being important. I love that.
And again, you’ve already given us loads of great recommendations for books. You can double down on one of those, or you can come up with another book. Just tell us what we should be reading.
Parul Bavishi: Nonfiction books. Business books?
Alison Jones: Well, I mean ideally, but frankly, we’re open to any good book recommendations here.
Parul Bavishi: Yes. I mean, I would actually, the 10 X not Two X by Ben Hardy really did shift my perspective. And there’s a couple, like the couple that I mentioned there, The Gain, Not the Gap and actually maybe I’ll go with this one and I’ll tell you why. So The Gain, Not the Gap is this idea that it is so easy for us as entrepreneurs, as people in business, to see our shortcomings and to think, to look up and think, God, there’s so far I still have to go. I have not reached where I thought I would go, and he’s pointing out, which may be obvious, but I certainly needed to hear it. Look down, look how far you’ve come. Look at all that you’ve achieved. That mindset will fortify you, almost, for what’s to come next. And that mindset will mean that you’re not an unhappy business owner. You’re not an unhappy entrepreneur. Because I think it’s really, really hard to be an entrepreneur. It’s really tough. You have to make up all the rules. You have to, you have to like clap yourself on the back when you’ve done a good job.
Alison Jones: Or not.
Parul Bavishi: So I really recommend that book, The Gap and the Gain.
Alison Jones: I love that. And it’s that lovely, it changes your state in the moment so it’s gets the happier life, that’s what we’re all after. But it also, as you say, it’s transformative because it fuels you for the future, which is what we’re all here for as well. I love that. Thank you. And I haven’t read it, so brilliant.
And if people want to find out more about you, more about London Writers’ Salon, more about Writers’ Hour, where should they go?
Parul Bavishi: Yes, and this is an open invite to anybody who finds it hard to write or wants to allocate some time. We write four times a day, so if you’re based in the UK, that’ll be 8:00 AM, 1:00 PM, 4:00 PM and 9:00 PM. It’s a silent writing session with some really light sort of intro and outro to just get you focused. But people have transformed their writing through coming along to these. So you just go to writers…
Alison Jones: I believe it.
Parul Bavishi: Thank you.
Alison Jones: Sorry, I spoke over your URL. Do that again.
Parul Bavishi: writershour.com. You can join us as often as you’d like, and if you need a little bit more, if you want some support, you can go to londonwriterssalon.com, you can become a member, there’s a lot more that we can help you with, things like Agent Hour, things like, you know, doing the five minute outline with Brannan.
All sorts of help like that. But yes, Writers’ Hour I think is a great place to start.
Alison Jones: Fantastic, and I’ll put those links up on the show notes at extraordinarybusinessbooks.com.
Parul, it has been such a treat talking to you, you’ve articulated everything brilliantly as I would expect, because you’re such a writer yourself, but I think there’s just pure gold in there for people. So I’m expecting this to be listened to eight times per listener. Thank you.
Parul Bavishi: Thank you so much. I really love being on this show and just good luck to anyone out here who’s writing, who’s in business, and in the business of trying to write a book. You’ve got this, like, remember your why and let’s go. Hope to see you at Writers’ Hour.
Alison Jones: Fantastic. Thanks so much.
Parul Bavishi: All right. Thank you.
