Change Fatigue: Flip Teams From Burnout to Buy-In
M client, Jenny Magic, who just published her first book, Change Fatigue: Flip Teams From Burnout to Buy-In, with her co-author Melissa Breker.
I was lucky enough to edit the book, a fascinating take on small-scale change management, available here. Feels so good to hold it in my hands!
A little backstory: Jenny came to me in late December 2022 with an outline and somewhere around 7,000 words written. Less than five months later, she and Melissa published a full-length book!
That is lightning fast in the world of books, even self-published books. I want to share some tips for how she and Melissa did it and what I learned from them.
Here's a short interview I did with Jenny (captions included).
Jenny and Melissa wanted to finish the manuscript within 10 weeks, but they set aside a lot of timein order to make it happen. They both had a realistic expectation of how much time it would take, and made that time available.
They had the information and outline, but they needed the stories that make a book accessible to an audience. Even an expert audience absorbs a book better if it contains "real-world examples," AKA, stories. That's where I came in--to identify areas of the book that needed more stories. A great partnership!
They knew theiraudience. Jenny kept asking herself what her reader needed to know so that they could hire her. Her continuing to return to that question brought a clarity that made it easy to know what to include in the book and what to leave out. (Then we just had to organize it.)
Jenny also told me that she’d had the idea for the book for years, which was part of the reason it came together so fast. It’d been marinating, simmering, percolatin’--any and all of the slow-cook metaphors.
It was, let’s say, 80 percent done in her head. But 80 percent done is not DONE, and she knew the final 20 percent would continue to elude her unless she hired some help.
If any of this sounds like it might be you...
In addition to editing, I offer a Manuscript Review.
Get specific recommendations for how to complete that last 20 percent. The manuscript review is also a great way to get a taste of working with me without committing to the full editing package.
Congratulations again to Jenny and Melissa!