What is a Book Doctor? Do you need a Book Doctor?

In this post we’re going to look at

1. What a Book Doctor Is
2. Details on what a Book Doctor does
3. People who really need a Book Doctor
4. People who could use the help of a Book Doctor
5. People who don’t need a Book Doctor

Read on to find out if you need a house call

What is a Book Doctor?

A Book Doctor is an experienced author or editor or author consultant or publishing professional who ‘diagnoses and fixes’ books

Just the way a normal Doctor looks at your body and your health and helps you get back to feeling great, a Book Doctor looks at your book and diagnoses issues with your book and helps you fix them. So that your book can be in great ‘health’

Fundamentally, a Book Doctor should cover both aspects

1. Identifies issues and problems and shows you how to fix them. To make your book ‘healthy and fit’
   1. This is basically – eliminating things that will instantly cause your book to fail
2. Shows you areas of improvement and teaches you how to make it a better book. To help the book be ‘in prime health’
   1. This is basically – adding things and improvements that will increase the chances your book becomes a success

Make sure you get both aspects covered, if you hire a Book Doctor

Some Details on a Book Doctor

A Book Doctor should have the following qualifications

1. Professional experience in the book publishing industry of over 10 years
   1. Do not hire a Book Doctor until and unless they have 10 or more years experience of doing a full time job in Books & Publishing
2. Proven Expertise – they should have proof of being one of the best at what they do (Book Doctor) and what they did (whatever their role was in the Publishing Industry)
3. Proven Success – make sure the Book Doctor can show you lots of examples of finished, high quality books they have worked on
   1. Also proof such as an invoice that they actually did work as a Book Doctor on the book
4. Demonstrated expertise in improving the quality of books
   1. If the books they give as examples are not very high quality books, walk away
5.  Excellent command of English
   1. Do not try to save money by going with someone in a country that does not have English as a first language
6. If the Book Doctor is an author, then ask for proof of their books having sold well
   1. Also buy and read through a few of their books and make sure the quality is very high
7. If the Book Doctor is an editor, then ask for proof of books they have edited having sold well
   1. Again, you should buy and read a few of their books and ensure the quality is very high

A Book Doctor should be able to deliver the following

1. Identify the ‘failure points’ in your book
2. Fix your book by removing all the failure points
3. Identify ‘areas of improvement’ which will help make your book better
4. Deliver these improvements and make your book a more polished product
5. Offer advice and insights on making your book successful
6. Deliver and improve the results you get in terms of book sales and reviews

All 3 are very important

1. Removing failure points
2. Addressing areas of improvement
3. Increasing sales and reviews

How do we measure these?

This is the tricky part. It’s very hard to measure the quality improvement

This is why you need to make sure the Book Doctor you hire is a professional, is experienced in Books & Publishing, and has a track record of success

No one can guarantee you success. However, what they can deliver, and should, is

1. Your book being a much better product
2. You having a much better understanding of what you need to do to succeed
3. Better returns in terms of
   1. Number of book sales per dollar spent on book marketing
   2. Number of reviews per every 100 book copies sold

Your book quality should increase greatly. That will reflect, at least partially, in better sales conversion and a higher percentage of readers leaving reviews

Next, let’s look at whether or not you need a Book Doctor

Do you need a Book Doctor?

Well, you would most likely fall into one of the following categories

People who really need a Book Doctor

Anyone who is producing a book that is mission critical, is writing a book that is their ‘magnum opus’, or needs something to get over that last hurdle to success, really would benefit from a Book Doctor

Examples of you really needing a Book Doctor include –

1. You’re writing your biography or your magnum opus and this is ‘the book’ you’ve been working on for a long time
2. You’re writing a book to promote your business, and your book needs to be really polished to attract high quality clients
3. You’ve been selling decently well. Yet you feel you need something to take your book quality and your book sales to the next level
4. You’re going for a big bestseller list such as New York Times or USA Today Bestseller lists. You need your book to be very top notch so that you can get the best out of your marketing budget (which will be quite large if/when going for these lists)
5. You have a lot of money and can afford to spend on a Book Doctor to get the absolute best quality book
6. You have an established book series (or established author name) and know that a certain number of sales are guaranteed. You feel it’s worth it to invest some of that ‘guaranteed incoming money’ into a Book Doctor and ramp up the quality of your product
7. You don’t have the available time to write another book. This is your one chance to see if you can write and sell books
8. You have lots of money but very little time

In general, the more critical a book is, the more money you have, the less time you have, the more you need a Book Doctor

People who could use a Book Doctor

Absolutely anyone could use a Book Doctor

This is a very important thing to keep in mind. You could use a Book Doctor

1. If you want the best quality product
2. If you want the highest chance of success (overall, chance of success will still be low, it will just be higher than if you didn’t use a Book Doctor)

The only two limiting factors are

1. Can you afford a Book Doctor
2. Is your book ready for a Book Doctor
   1. You cannot have an unpolished book and expect a Book Doctor to do voodoo and sorcery and make it amazing
   2. The Book should already be rewritten, edited, proof read

If you want the highest possible quality, you need a Book Doctor

People who do not need a Book Doctor

Firstly, let’s get some special cases out of the way

You do not need a Book Doctor and will not benefit from one if any of the following are true

1. Your book is not well written
2. You have not done at least a few rewrites
3. Your book is not edited
4. You view writing as just a hobby and don’t really care if your book is high quality or not
5. Your book is not proofread
6. You don’t really want to be an author
7. You don’t really want to write

Basically, your book must be polished, and you must want to be an author

If you are a hobbyist, or not even sure you want to be an author, then there is little point in hiring a Book Doctor

Secondly, a Book Doctor is not a good fit for the following types of writers

1. People who are in a hurry
   1. No good Book Doctor will ‘rush’ things
   2. Any Book Doctor who promises 3 day or 7 day rush delivery is not really a Book Doctor
      1. It takes a few weeks to a few months to a year to do a proper ‘Book Doctor’ job on a book
2. Authors who think they were born with perfect knowledge of what it takes to write a book
   1. Impossible to learn from a Book Doctor if you think you know more than the Doctor
3. ‘My Way or the Highway’ type of people who will not listen to the Book Doctor’s advice
   1. If you’re just going to do what you wanted to do, then why waste money seeking professional advice
4. People who are short of money
   1. Unfortunately, there is no easy way to afford a Book Doctor on a limited budget
5. People who are focused on Return on Investment
   1. It is quite difficult to measure ROI with a Book Doctor
   2. If you decide based on a Profits and Loss and ROI spreadsheet, it will be impossible for you to justify/rationalize the cost of a Book Doctor
6. Writers in small markets
   1. In small markets, there is just not enough money in book sales to afford a Book Doctor
7. Writers who have to produce a lot of books – 1 or 2 or more each month
   1. You just will not be able to fit in a Book Doctor into your busy schedule

Hopefully, this helps you figure out whether or not you will go with a Book Doctor

If you decide to, please make sure to read our section on how to pick a good Book Doctor

All the best!