No reader cares if the idea is new or old. They only care if it’s USEFUL TO THEM. EXAMPLE OF AN AUTHOR WITH THIS FEAR My favorite example of this is Meetings Suck by Cameron Herold. How many business books are there on meetings? According to Amazon, there are 50,000. Surely if there was one book that did not need to be written, it was this one, right? That’s what Cameron thought at first. We walked through what he knew, and helped him realize that though his methodology for meetings had no single insight that was truly original, the way that he combined all his insights and presented a complete plan for how to run a meeting was deeply useful to everyone he coached and taught. With 105 reviews and 45,000 copies sold, it’s obvious that his take is engaging with people in a way that none of the other books on meetings have. ThE Six fEArS yOU (COUlD) fACE WriTiNg yOUr BOOk · 29