Shep Hyken's Be Amazing or Go Home Was Produced So Well a Traditional Publisher Came Calling
“But the book was well done and produced in such a way that maybe a couple, three years later, a regular publisher comes along and says, we noticed you wrote this book with Scribe, would you like to go mainstream with us?”
Shep Hyken, author of Be Amazing or Go Home
Shep Hyken has spent his career on one question: what makes customers come back? The Chief Amazement Officer at Shepard Presentations has written eight books plus five co-authored books, and speaking is the primary way he makes his living. Be Amazing or Go Home, which he published with Scribe, was produced well enough that a traditional publisher came asking to take it mainstream.
A book is a speaking business
Clip · Shep Hyken on how his books built his speaking business · 68s
Shep wrote his first book, Moments of Magic, in the late 1980s. A friend told him he would make a million dollars with it, and Shep assumed that meant a lot of copies. The friend meant something else: put the book in the right hands and companies would book him for speeches and training.
“And I’m not going to say I made a million dollars off that book, but definitely over time that all the books really contribute to the credibility of me as a speaker and my content for training purposes. So it really, in a way it has probably made well over a million dollars for me.”
— Shep Hyken
A publisher came calling
Clip · Shep Hyken on the publisher that noticed his Scribe book · 35s
Be Amazing or Go Home was Shep’s first book with Scribe, and it is now nine years old. He stayed in his lane of customer service and experience, but wrote it to cross over into straight motivation: be amazing for your customers, your colleagues, your friends, and your family. A few years after it came out, a traditional publisher noticed it.
“And so they actually took the rights and we made a deal that I got distribution direct to my clients.”
— Shep Hyken
The book is still working. Shep has a client speech in November titled Be Amazing or Go Home, and he is pulling content from the book into it. On Amazon, it has 243 reviews with a 4.6-star rating.
Own the rights, give the book away
Clip · Shep Hyken on owning your rights and the expensive business card · 38s
For Shep, owning the rights is what makes a book a business tool. An author who owns the book can print extra copies on demand instead of buying them at retail, which means the book can be given away freely and even used as a negotiation tool.
“And by the way, that’s another key reason to want to use a company like Scribe is you own the rights to the book.”
— Shep Hyken
“So I can give away these books as a as an expensive business card, if you will.”
— Shep Hyken
Put the book in the right hands
Clip · Shep Hyken on getting the book to every decision-maker · 47s
Shep started his career in 1983 with a list of 200 companies built from full-page ads he found in business magazines at the library. Today he builds the same list on LinkedIn, engages with executives’ posts first, and only then offers to send a copy of his book.
When he speaks, he wants the book in every attendee’s hands before he arrives. When he is being considered for a speech, he mails a copy to every person involved in the decision.
“The client buys the book for everyone. And I’m willing to discount that book at a pretty dramatic price just to make sure that book gets in the hands of everybody.”
— Shep Hyken
Write it yourself, then make it clean
Clip · Shep Hyken on handing in a clean manuscript · 63s
Shep has written two or three articles every week for decades, and his books are assembled from them. His longtime editor stitches the articles into chapters, and Shep aims to hand over a manuscript clean enough that the final edit has little to fix. He uses AI to check and edit his work, but never to write it.
“If you start letting these technologies write for you, anybody can do that. You’re not an expert.”
— Shep Hyken
“You do not want to lose credibility because you have a book that’s riddled with errors.”
— Shep Hyken
The job is getting the speech
Clip · Shep Hyken on why the job is getting the speech · 38s
His advice to authors who want speaking work from their book: break it into short weekly articles, post them on LinkedIn, a newsletter, and a blog, and turn them into video.
“If you can’t go through a chapter in your book and pull up three or four really good points, the chapter is probably not worth reading and therefore you’re probably not worth getting booked or doing business with.”
— Shep Hyken
“And you can take one piece of content, your book, and you can repurpose that into a year’s worth of incredible social media content.”
— Shep Hyken
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