Publishing a book as a therapist
A hybrid training and live interview with an established publisher.
You are a therapist, and you have a great book idea.
Now what?
We talk to therapists regularly who want to write a book. There are a lot of reasons you may consider becoming a published author:
Establishing yourself as an expert
Developing yourself as a speaker
A deep desire to make big change in the world
A way to fill up your private practice
An additional stream of income
Whatever the reason you are considering writing a book, there are a lot of options you have for writing, publishing, and marketing your book. We've talked a bit about self-publishing with our free training on how one therapist successfully launched an e-book. However, traditional publishing has some major advantages as well. What publishing route you choose should be based on your goals, preferences, and big vision.
How to find a publisher for your book
Today we have something really fun for you. A quick hybrid training where we are going to give you some specific questions to ask a prospective publisher to determine if they are the right spot for your fabulous book idea. We call it a hybrid- because we have YouthLight publishing with us- and we test out the questions we recommend you ask- so you get to see us interview a real, live publisher who loves to publish therapists.
Spoiler alert: They not only love to set their authors up with workshops all over the country (and sometimes around the world) but they also have a distribution list of 4 BILLION people! To be honest- I was shocked as you probably are right now! I had no idea just how big these guys were until I started interviewing them.
Wasn't Kelly a sweetheart for sitting down with us? We were so lucky to be seated right next to her doing the conference. I saw she was selling books, but didn't go much deeper into her business initially. (Instead we shared pictures of our kids, went to lunch together, and laughed a ton). However, as we spent time together over the week- more came out about her business, and I realized I was about to miss a golden opportunity!
Side note about networking at conferences:
As exhibitors at the American Play Therapy's Annual Conference, it was interesting to see people looking terrified to stop, look, and have a chat. I get it. I don't want to be "sold" to any more than the next person. However, if you stop and get to know people- you might be pleasantly surprised at what you will find out- and how awesome things can happen! (FYI: We weren't there to sell anybody anything).
In fact, several people reluctantly stopped at our booth (for the yummy snacks or because I said hello), and they quickly said- I'm not in private practice. I'd find out a bit more about them, and many of them were in the licensure process- so I'd hook them up with the pre-licensed blog and the free online study group for licensing exams and they got to walk away with cool, free resources!
I can't speak to everyone at these conferences- but I can tell you Kelly and I are there to be helpful, meet awesome people, and have a great time!
