The Publishing Performance Show

Emily Crookston of Pocket PhD - The Business Case for Your Book: Strategic Publishing for Thought Leaders

• Teddy Smith • Episode 90

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Emily Crookston is the owner and "decider of all things" at Pocket PhD, where she specializes in ghostwriting and developmental editing for business books. With a PhD in philosophy and background as a professor, Emily transitioned to content writing, starting with blog posts before moving to longer formats like business books. Her focus is helping thought leaders and business owners create books that serve as effective tools for lead generation, authority building, and speaking opportunities. Emily recently published her own book, "Unwritten: The Thought Leaders Guide to Not Overthinking Your Business Book," which guides business owners through the process of writing and publishing their books without getting stuck in overthinking.

In this episode:

  • Building a compelling business case for writing a book
  • Finding your unique point of view among similar books
  • Maintaining author authenticity when working with a ghostwriter
  • Using AI effectively as a brainstorming partner
  • Avoiding common overthinking traps in book writing
  • Setting realistic word count goals for busy entrepreneurs
  • Self-publishing advantages for business books
  • Creating reader-centric content even in business memoirs
  • Positioning your book strategically in the marketplace
  • Finding time to write while running a business


Resources mentioned:


Book Recommendations:


Connect with Emily Crookston:


Connect with Teddy Smith:

Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/company/publishing-performance/

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[00:00:00] Teddy Smith: Hi everyone and welcome to the Publishing Informant Show. Today I'm really happy to be joined by Emily Crookston, who is the owner and the decider of all things at Pocket PhD. So thank you for joining me, Emily. 

[00:00:17] Emily Crookston: Hey Teddy, it's great to be here. Thanks for having me. 

[00:00:19] Teddy Smith: No, no problem. So tell, what do you mean?

[00:00:21] Teddy Smith: What does the owner and decider of all things that pocket PhD mean? 

[00:00:24] Emily Crookston: Yeah. Yeah. That's my little tongue in cheek way of referring to myself. I always prefer owner to CEO. I am mainly a solopreneur, though I sometimes work with. Other writers as a contractor. And I just use that as a designation to say, you know, it's my business.

[00:00:40] Emily Crookston: I'm in charge and you know, I make all the decisions here. So yeah, just my way of calling myself an owner. 

[00:00:48] Teddy Smith: Oh, perfect. Well, well, tell me about Pocket PhD and what it exactly you do. 

[00:00:51] Emily Crookston: Yeah. Yeah. So, I used to be a philosophy professor. I used to teach philosophy, so that's where the PhD side comes from. I do have a PhD in philosophy but I started out, uh, as, as a, you know, a writer of blogs, a ghost blogger, I guess, writing a bunch of blogs for folks.

[00:01:06] Emily Crookston: And at some point I realized, oh, if I wanna make a living, writing content, blogging is probably not gonna cut it. Uh, that's a lot of blogs to write every week. And of course now, you know, 10 years later, uh, blogs for business have become less and less of a thing. So I, and at some point, maybe five, six years ago, I said I can write longer things and started writing books for people.

[00:01:26] Emily Crookston: So now I mainly do. Business book, ghost Writing, and I also do developmental editing. So you already have your book finished and you need sort of a first reader. You need someone to help you organize it, rearrange it. I can step in and, and do that work as well. But yeah, I help all people with all things related to writing business books these days.

[00:01:45] Teddy Smith: Perfect. So when you are doing the ghost writing, you are mostly focusing on business books. So is there a particular type of client you usually try and work with? 

[00:01:53] Emily Crookston: Yeah, so I'm pretty much industry agnostic. I've written everything from like heavy research books with six different authors, so makes even, even weirder, right?

[00:02:03] Emily Crookston: A ghost writer working with six different authors. So lots of authors on that kind of book. Two, you know, your basic kind of how to or personal development, professional development type. Books. One of my recent projects was with a client who's a productivity coach. Actually today is her launch day for her book.

[00:02:19] Emily Crookston: So it's super exciting. But she's written this book about productivity tips for everyone from a manager to a C-suite to, you know, an individual team member. And, you know, if you feel like. All you're doing all day long is putting out fires and you get to the end of your workday and you're like, what did I do today?

[00:02:34] Emily Crookston: You know, it's like trying to get some space in there. Help you kind of think bigger and, and do more high value work, that kind of thing. Yeah, of course. Yeah. So when you are, when people are deciding whether they want to write a book, and I think this is one of the, you've got a new book come out, which is Unwritten.

[00:02:49] Teddy Smith: Yes. The Thought Leaders Guide to Not Overthinking Your Business Book, and I think one of the key points in that is. When people are writing their book, they need to make sure they have a really compelling business case for writing that book. Yeah. So how do you help people to decide on that business case?

[00:03:06] Emily Crookston: Yeah, that's right. I think that if you're going to write a book for your business, you need to think very hard about the business case. You know, a lot of business owners say, I don't have a book. My friend wrote a book. I wanna be an author, you know, but they don't always think hard about how that book fits in with their business strategy.

[00:03:23] Emily Crookston: Writing a book is a lot of work, a lot of time, probably a lot of money that, you know, if it doesn't make sense for your business and it's, you can't see how it's gonna help your business grow, then it probably just doesn't make sense to write that book right now. So I tell people, you know. Think about how you want your business to grow, how you want this book to fit in.

[00:03:42] Emily Crookston: Often that's lead generation. So my productivity client, she's a coach. She wants to get into companies to talk to their teams about productivity. And so now she has a book and she can say. Find my book, we'll do a training and then I can help you figure out you know, what, what more help you need from there, right?

[00:04:00] Emily Crookston: So it grows your business because it gets her in front of more would be clients. It makes her stand out as an authority in her space. Another place that uh, business books are really helpful is if you wanna be a speaking, you wanna have a speaking career, or you wanna build speaking into the business strategy, or you're already a speaker, but you wanna get.

[00:04:19] Emily Crookston: To, or you wanna get on bigger stages? Book. Yeah. So I get people, you know, brainstorming. How a book might tie into their business, how it might support their business. And I try to get them most importantly, away from thinking about, I wanna be a bestselling author because most people, for a business book, that's not the best goal for you.

[00:04:39] Emily Crookston: You know, uh, that's, that's a great goal. If you're Oprah or you know, you're already pretty famous. Or you already have a bestseller, uh, or you wanna be a fiction author and you, you know, make money on your fiction book. But for a business book, uh, you know, book sales is probably not where you're gonna make, make money.

[00:04:55] Teddy Smith: Yeah, for sure. Esp you know, especially with nonfiction and business books, that bestseller rank is so easily manipulated and so many people just wanna be like. I wanna be a bestselling author so they can say it, but I'm telling you, I know this for a fact. Nine of nine out 10 of them are just paying for thousands of dollars of ads so they can appear near the top.

[00:05:14] Teddy Smith: Yeah, 

[00:05:14] Emily Crookston: exactly. Everyone is a bestseller on Amazon also, right? I mean, you have to do something very wrong not to have a bestseller, uh, of in some genre on Amazon. Yeah. But that's really kind of misleading if you.

[00:05:30] Teddy Smith: Now a lot of people, as you mentioned, a lot of business people, they say, I want to have a book because for the, yeah, for the reasons. You said it could be lead generation, it could be they want to get a speaking just to improve their profile in the relation in the business they're in. So when it comes to thinking about that compelling business case, so that's the, the reason they want to do it is 'cause of those reasons.

[00:05:50] Teddy Smith: But when your brainstorming ideas of them, what sort of angles do you usually try and speak to 'em about to make their book a bit different to everything else that's already out there? 

[00:06:00] Emily Crookston: Yeah, that's a really good point. Having a point of view is really important, right. Uh, because otherwise your book ends up sounding like every other.

[00:06:08] Emily Crookston: A person's book out there, especially something like productivity, the, how many productivity books are there? There's millions of productivity books, right? Yeah. So, yeah, you have to think about, it often comes down to audience, you know, who are you talking to? Because and this is a place where a lot of authors also get tripped up because I think, well, I'm talking to everyone.

[00:06:27] Emily Crookston: I'm talking, you know, anyone could read this book, and I always say, of course, anyone could read this book. Yes. Anyone from a college grad to a seasoned professional probably could get something out of your book. But when you're writing, you have to think about a very specific audience that you're writing to.

[00:06:41] Emily Crookston: So if you wanna work with leaders who are vice presidents or directors, or if you're really talking to managers with teams, right? Have that audience in the back of your mind. And it, and it's often really good to even think about a one specific person you're writing to, because then your examples get very specific.

[00:06:59] Emily Crookston: You know, if it's.

[00:07:06] Emily Crookston: Hard about what, what the audience is and what they need, because that kind of automatically shifts you into something a bit different from every other book out there. So that's one thing. But another thing is just to, to think about what you do differently from your competitors. What you do, you know, what, you know, it's the same question as what's your unique value proposition when you're, when you're, you know, developing your business plan or your business model.

[00:07:29] Emily Crookston: You know, what is it that you do especially different? What is it? You know, no one. I also like this question, what is it that no one can get away with without knowing when they work with you? Right? What, what is the thing that someone's not gonna be able to leave your presence without understanding or without knowing?

[00:07:47] Emily Crookston: And that can help you kind out your book. Yeah. And as, as a developmental editor, and when you're working with business people, it's that you have quite close relationship with them. When you are building out that book, it's not a case of someone writing a book and being, Hey, can you go and edit this?

[00:08:00] Teddy Smith: It's like a, a process. You work with 'em along the way. So what do you do that helps business people to get that, you know, unique perspective out? Are there any, uh, tips you do to try and coax out Yeah. At really specific bits of information? Yeah, yeah, this is a great question. So, often what I do with my developmental editing is, you know, they have a manuscript, but it, it often, that point of view is missing because, you know, sometimes you're, as you're writing a book, it's funny how much your thinking shifts.

[00:08:28] Emily Crookston: Especially if you're working on it over six months or a year or more, right? So you might write chapter one a year ago, and then you get to the end and you're like, you've changed your definition or you've changed, you know, you, something has shifted and you have to go back and fix all those parts. So I'm often there doing that kind of cleanup work.

[00:08:44] Emily Crookston: But yeah, there's a lot of questions about. Consistency, you know, is, does this still make sense to your audience? You know, and it's funny, I asked that audience question so many times for my clients, you know, it's just often comes up again and again. I'm always like, you know, litmus testing. You know, what, what we're writing against that, that audience and, and the positioning, right?

[00:09:06] Emily Crookston: Positioning is another important piece. I this in my own book because. Where you want your book to sit on the shelf in the bookstore, you know whose book ideally would you like to be next to? Yeah. And that can really help you think about the positioning, like, is this style, you know, does the style work for you?

[00:09:25] Emily Crookston: Is it gonna grab the audience? And one thing that I think one big mistake that people make when it comes to positioning is. They are telling their story, right? When you write a book, you're writing it from your own perspective. You have to shift that perspective to putting yourself in the shoes of your reader.

[00:09:42] Emily Crookston: And that can be, you know, difficult. The book should be reader centric, not author centric. You know, even if you're writing a memoir, and a lot of my books. Uh, that I work on contain memoir elements to them, and yeah, it's about you, but how, why should a reader read your story? Why should they keep turning the page?

[00:10:00] Emily Crookston: So often just these simple questions like, why should a reader keep, keep going with this 14 page introduction? Right? Can help you, you know, like, what's the hook? Let's, let's get the reader into this a little bit. So, yeah. Yeah. 

[00:10:12] Teddy Smith: It sounds like that a lot of peop the, well, it sounds like the reason you wrote this book, the overthinking book, is because it, from what you are describing, a lot of people do really overthink this exact thing You're talking about like writing too much or not knowing where they're going.

[00:10:27] Teddy Smith: Mm-hmm. So what are the common traps with overthinking and like what the problems that that can cause? 

[00:10:32] Emily Crookston: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I think you can overthink your book at any stage. Yeah, that's, that's the truth. And I work a lot with thought leaders. So, you know, you've built your business, you built, you built your success around thinking, right?

[00:10:45] Emily Crookston: So, so you, you think that you could think your way out of everything, and that is true to some extent, but you can also tend into overthinking with it. And so one way you can overthink is bias. Spending way too much time planning out your book and you know, asking yourself a million questions before you even start writing.

[00:11:02] Emily Crookston: And you can, you can have these writer's block because of this, right? You can think, oh, I don't know what I'm gonna write. And I think people don't realize how much thinking happens when you actually put your fingers on the keyboard and just start. You start. I think people overthink that they need to write their book in perfect order.

[00:11:18] Emily Crookston: They need to start on on page one and end on page 20. And that's not true. You know, you can get very stuck like rewriting the introduction a thousand times. So you can get stuck in the editing phase where you're just. You know, rewriting even as you're trying to get that draft finished. So that's one of my big tips that helps avoid overthinking is just get to that messy draft.

[00:11:38] Emily Crookston: That's, that's your first goal. Get it out as fast as you can. And, and if you feel stuck, move to a different chapter. If you, you, you know, you feel like you don't know what to write, write anything. Right. What you know and start with that. 

[00:11:50] Teddy Smith: Yeah. Now, when people working with you and. I think a lot of people, especially readers, make the assumption that books are written like almost entirely by the people that are obviously the author on them.

[00:12:03] Teddy Smith: But you also, as you do ghost writing, the editing, it sounds like a lot of the work is done by other people. Uh, how do you try and help the, the person who's the author to maintain the authenticity when you're doing that? 

[00:12:15] Emily Crookston: Yeah, this is really important if, if you work with a ghost writer, if you have anyone helping you with the book.

[00:12:20] Emily Crookston: And I think that is a misconception sometimes that ghost writers are actually the ones doing the thought, doing the thinking, doing the work. I can assure you that's not the case. Uh, I've written many books where I'm not an expert at all. And, and I rely on my audience or my client to bring me, uh, their ideas and then I just get to write about them.

[00:12:39] Emily Crookston: I do the discipline of writing if. And yeah, you know, it's, it's authorship and, and authenticity and all of that. I really, you know, I listen very hard for their voice and the even like jokes that they make. Like all of these things are, are cues and clues for me as I'm writing, I. I almost think of it as method acting sometimes.

[00:12:59] Emily Crookston: Like I'm, I hear my author's voice in my head when I'm writing. And I want, you know, I'm always asking, does this sound like them? And I tell my clients, I'm, I say, you can be as honest as you want. And if you would never say it like this, tell me. I would never say it like this. That's really important feedback for me to have.

[00:13:17] Emily Crookston: But yeah, so I generally will do the writing and then my clients will edit it and that really helps them. Take ownership mm-hmm. Over the book. And I always say, you know, feel free to write as much as you want. You know, you're paying me to do the discipline of the writing, but if you feel strongly that you wanna write this story, go ahead and, and write that story, and then I can edit it.

[00:13:35] Emily Crookston: You know, I can help you figure out what you need. 

[00:13:37] Teddy Smith: So if someone, if someone is writing, if your ghost writing a book for someone, and, uh, what amount of information do they need to prepare beforehand in order for you to create an amazing book? 

[00:13:47] Emily Crookston: Yeah. So I used to do it where I required my clients to bring me a work.

[00:13:53] Emily Crookston: Working outline to start. I've shifted away from that a little bit because I'm using AI a little bit in my work. And so I really like to use AI at that brainstorming stage, trying to figure out what the book is about. So now it's more, you know, come to me with a rough idea of what you wanna write about.

[00:14:10] Emily Crookston: Or at least just be able to like, record yourself for 10 minutes talking about your book transcript. Drop it, ai and I can play with, play around with it and see what kind of ideas we can start. I never use AI when I'm to directly do any writing for me. Yeah. I don't have it write drafts. But I really like it as a thought partner and an assistant in that direction.

[00:14:31] Emily Crookston: So, yeah. Now I, you know, I'm, I actually have a lot of fun helping my clients figure out what their book idea is. I used to really shy away from that because again, I'm not the expert. I don't know what you should be writing, you know? 'cause sometimes people come to Ghost Riders and they say things like. Oh, well, you tell me you're the expert.

[00:14:48] Emily Crookston: What's, what's a really good book in the, you know, what would be a great book in this genre? And I'm like, oh gosh. You know, like, you know your industry better than I do. You know your audience better than I do. I'm here to support you in figuring out what's best. Yeah. But yeah, I'm, I'm happy to help now kind of play, play along and figure that, figure out that path.

[00:15:06] Teddy Smith: What sorts of questions should the owners of these businesses that come to you be asking themselves? Like before the, they get that sort of manuscript writing. The, the, yeah. What, what I'm trying to think is, you know, people were gonna work with a ghost writer, obviously they could just turn up with no real thoughts and then Yeah.

[00:15:22] Teddy Smith: That's probably not gonna produce the best book if they come to you. Right. With particular bits of information that's gonna help load. I've what? I've had books ghost written myself and I've written Yeah. Outlines not, they've not been at the level of your books. They're much more simple books, but, mm-hmm.

[00:15:36] Teddy Smith: I'm trying to think, what information would it be? The business people that listens to this, what would they need to ask in order to come to you with the best possible amount of information for you? Yeah, yeah, that's a great question. So one thing is just being able, and it's surprisingly hard for people being able to talk about what you do on a daily basis with your clients.

[00:15:54] Emily Crookston: You know, we, it's really great if you have a process, if you have like a what do we call it?

[00:16:03] Emily Crookston: An S-O-P-A-A state, you know, a standard operating procedure, you know, something along those lines that you use with your clients, you know, step by step, here's how I do it. And to be able to talk me through like, how does my client, how does my client find me? What, what's their question? What's their problem?

[00:16:20] Emily Crookston: How do I solve that problem? So knowing what problems your clients have is a really good starting point, and also knowing your own motivations, you know, beyond. The business case for the book Beyond. I wanna be an author. Why, why are you writing this book? I have a whole section in my book about finding your books.

[00:16:37] Emily Crookston: Why? So people talk a lot about finding their purpose behind their business, right? The the why behind your business. But what about the book, right? The book is, you can almost think of your book as you're starting a new business or have a

[00:16:56] Emily Crookston: income, a. Why, why, why, why do you even wanna go in that direction? So you should be thinking the same way about your book. 

[00:17:04] Teddy Smith: Yeah. That's, I, I, I think that's really good, just getting that opinion, especially out of you. Like you must have a way of expressing yourself otherwise. What's the reason for you writing the book in the first place?

[00:17:13] Teddy Smith: Yeah. 

[00:17:14] Emily Crookston: Right. 

[00:17:15] Teddy Smith: I speak to a lot of clients who want to write productivity books and I'm thinking, well, you really wanna go and compete with atomic habits? Like what, what are you doing? Like, 

[00:17:24] Emily Crookston: exactly 

[00:17:26] Teddy Smith: how are you gonna make your book difference what everyone else is doing? 

[00:17:29] Emily Crookston: Right? Yeah. It's so funny. You know, you, you do a thing for, for so long and you suddenly think you could teach people about how to do it Right.

[00:17:37] Emily Crookston: And that might be the case. That's often case, have things have understand, is. What's that unique thing that you've figured out? What's, what's the, you know, the million dollar idea, if you will, or, you know, whatever, what is it that that makes you really stand out so that you can write the book and Yeah.

[00:17:54] Emily Crookston: You know, a lot of the times you're not, you shouldn't be thinking about competing with the big guys because that's really hard to do and you know, probably impossible for if you're just a business owner just trying to. Grow your business, you don't have to compete, which is the good news. But yeah, you have to be thinking about, you know, it, it, I think the key is if you can come up with a really good title for your book, then you probably, you might not have something unique.

[00:18:17] Emily Crookston: It, it can be very hard to come up with a title if you don't, you, you know, if you don't have a point of view. But if that title kind of pops into your head, then that's a, that's a good indication that you've got. Yeah. Great book idea. 

[00:18:29] Teddy Smith: Nice. That's a really nice idea. Now, when you are doing this work with your writers, and I think you touched on it just re just slightly, but a lot of people are using AI obviously to either improve their productivity or to, you know, even write parts of the book, so mm-hmm.

[00:18:44] Teddy Smith: When you are using AI or you're recommending people and they're using AI as well, do you have any sort of guidelines or boundaries that you think they should be, uh, sticking to or, or any good ways of mastering their prompts so that it's like making sure you're getting the best output? 

[00:18:58] Emily Crookston: Yeah, this is a great, great question.

[00:19:00] Emily Crookston: So one of the things I think that's really important with using AI is telling it what you need from it. So sometimes people say, you know, I'm writing a book about x gimme three book descriptions, right? And that you can get some, you'll get some very generic book descriptions that feel very corporate-y that feel very like already been done, right?

[00:19:20] Emily Crookston: Because AI is give you something groundbreaking with just. Hey, I want you to role play with me. You're gonna be my first reader, and here's the description of who you are. And you describe your client or you describe the reader, target reader that you're aiming at, and you describe it to a like, as, as, as much as you can, right?

[00:19:43] Emily Crookston: A very detailed, as much detail as you can give it. Uh, and then you might even ask, you might even prompt further, you might even say, what, what am I missing? What, what more information do you need to. Play this role, role as my first reader. And then from there, you're kind of building an avatar, right?

[00:19:59] Emily Crookston: You're building a a, a kind of avatar for yourself. And then from there you can say, okay, I wanna write a book about X. Here are my ideas. And maybe you give it a few more sentences about the book, and then you ask it, okay, give me three book descriptions that will give you a much better result. And then you can start using it.

[00:20:15] Emily Crookston: You know, again, I like to use it as brainstorming, not necessarily drafting, but if you give it. Prompts. And if you give it enough of a specific you know, description of what you're looking for, you'll get a much better result. And I think people give up really soon with AI sometimes when they're just like, ah, it's not giving me good information, you know, but they haven't given it enough input.

[00:20:35] Emily Crookston: Yeah. And then you can save it in the knowledge base and depending on what AI you're using, you can save that information and then you'll have a really good agent that you've created Yeah. To work with. Mm-hmm. 

[00:20:45] Teddy Smith: Lovely. Now I've got one more question and it, okay. It's about the when you're writing books, so look, I suppose a lot, especially with your clients that you work with, but this will be, you know, practical for everybody.

[00:20:54] Teddy Smith: But yeah, people are busy and they've got lots of other things on. Now they don't have time to focus on things like. Well focus on maintaining focus. For example, their business going whilst they're also writing a. How do you help people to maintain that focus, get the momentum, and also find the time really to write the book?

[00:21:16] Emily Crookston: Yeah, that's one of the biggest questions that I get and, and it's honestly probably the hardest part about writing a book, uh, and running a business at the same time. It's why a lot of people come to me and say, oh, I've been trying to write a book. For five years or 10 years, you know, and I'm never getting it done.

[00:21:30] Emily Crookston: And I get it, but I think the number one thing you could do is set yourself a word count goal. And I like to set myself a weekly word count goal, because that, to me, give, sets me up for success because if you do daily. And you miss a day, you're like, oh, I miss a day. And then you give up, right? But if it's weekly, you know, you could miss a couple days and you still have time to, to hit your goal, especially if the goal is realistic for you.

[00:21:53] Emily Crookston: So I say, you know, do a couple of timed writing sessions. Figure out how long it takes you to write like 500 words or a thousand words, and figure out, you know, okay, I could reasonably spend two hours a week working on my book. Maybe it's on the weekend. Maybe you get up early one day, right? You, you, you find these pockets of time, but you've.

[00:22:11] Emily Crookston: Kind of figure out how much time you have and use that to set your word count goal your weekly word count goal. And then that'll give you a really good idea, a benchmark of, you know, how long it will take you to write your first draft. I always tell people that a reasonable draft is 40,000 words.

[00:22:26] Emily Crookston: If you have 60,000, great, but 40,000 words is a really good word count for a business book that's about a hundred to 150 pages when it's printed. And so you can say, okay, I wanna get to 40,000 words by November. How many words a week do I have to write to get there? And then, you know, you start, start trucking away.

[00:22:43] Emily Crookston: Start, you know, start tapping away at the keyboard. Yep. 

[00:22:47] Teddy Smith: Yeah. So your book, I'm written The Thought Leaders Guide to Not Overthinking Your Business book that's available everywhere. Yes. You know, tell, tell us, uh, just a little bit about that book and why people should buy it. 

[00:22:58] Emily Crookston: Yeah. Yeah. So that's my book on how to write a business book.

[00:23:02] Emily Crookston: Yeah. So it's a little bit meta. Yeah. But it's, it's really how to write a business book if you are a business owner. And it talks about the, everything from planning to writing to promotion and publishing. So it's got three parts. And, uh, walk me through how to get your book done. 

[00:23:16] Teddy Smith: Yeah. Oh, and you mentioned it goes into publishing as well.

[00:23:19] Teddy Smith: Do you, do you, do you recommend people actually try and find publishers to their books? Or is it mo mostly through self-publishing? 

[00:23:24] Emily Crookston: Yeah, most of my clients are self-published. Yeah. I think that makes the most sense for business books 'cause it's faster you own all the rights to it. And then again, you're not really focused on being a bestseller.

[00:23:33] Emily Crookston: So, you know, that, that helps you keep, keep focused on what matters for you as a business book writer. 

[00:23:39] Teddy Smith: Great. And if people wanted to work with you, what are the sorts of people you'd be looking for as your ideal clients? 

[00:23:44] Emily Crookston: Yeah, so anybody who wants to write a book to grow their business, that's, that's where I'm looking.

[00:23:49] Emily Crookston: So again, that's often how to books or guides. It's also, uh, personal development. A little bit of self-help is in there as well. I've written books with coaches, lot of coaches but I really love to work with experts, uh, to get, you know, big ideas outta their heads and into the world. 

[00:24:05] Teddy Smith: Lovely. Well, great.

[00:24:06] Teddy Smith: Well, thank, thank you so much for coming on. It's been an absolute pleasure to speak to you. I've really enjoyed breaking down exactly how to write your business book. I mean, I think you could, yeah, go away and get this done yourself, but working with someone like you as a development editor is gonna be super helpful.

[00:24:18] Teddy Smith: As you break down those ideas and get it really professional, I think that's gonna help load. So thanks very much. 

[00:24:23] Emily Crookston: Yeah, thank you, Teddy. It's been fun. 

[00:24:24] Teddy Smith: Yeah. Great. So if people wanna get in touch, where's the best place to follow you around the internet? 

[00:24:28] Emily Crookston: Yeah, so I am available on LinkedIn. You can find me Emily Crookston there.

[00:24:33] Emily Crookston: But also my website is the pocket phd.com. Brilliant. Thank you very much. And just one last question before we go, and that's the question we ask for everyone and that's what's a book you recommend everyone should be reading? I. Yeah, sure. So, I am right now just starting to get into Gretchen Rubin's book, uh, better than Before.

[00:24:50] Emily Crookston: So we've talked a bit about productivity books, this call, and, and you know, competing with Atomic Habits. And this is one of those books. So it's all about. Why do some have it stick and others don't? It's, it's really interesting, full of good research as well as practical tips. 

[00:25:04] Teddy Smith: Yeah. Yeah. And it's, it's usually because you're reading productivity books rather than being productive.

[00:25:09] Emily Crookston: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Sometimes productivity is just getting, getting down to it. Yeah. Getting to work. It's true. 

[00:25:16] Teddy Smith: Well, thanks Emily for joining. It's been great to chat and we'll speak soon. 

[00:25:19] Emily Crookston: Awesome. Thanks. 

[00:25:20] Teddy Smith: Thank you so much for tuning into the Publishing performance podcast. I really hope you found today's episode inspiring.

[00:25:26] Teddy Smith: I love chatting to authors, writers, and people in the publishing world. Now, just before we wrap up, let me tell you about publishing performance, the number one platform for authors who want to increase Amazon book sales, but I'm not really sure where to start. Now, this show is all about helping you to sell more books.

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