Gregory V. Diehl: The Influential Author: How and Why to Write, Publish, and Sell Nonfiction Books that Matter
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Gregory V. Diehl: The Influential Author: How and Why to Write, Publish, and Sell Nonfiction Books that Matter Identity Publications, www.identitypublications.com, 2018, 438 pp., $19.99, ISBN: 9781945884658 Tiffany Watson1
© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
The Influential Author reads at times like a writing guide, a self-publisher’s memoir, and a book on publishing. The strongest element is the memoir, namely, Gregory V. Diehl has many anecdotes from his experience as a self-published author turned publisher, when he applies his advice through the frame of experiences, his message is clear and convincing. The goal of this book is to be a definitive and timeless title on the subject of selfpublishing. With a topic so general there can naturally be pitfalls, which this book contains. Diehl has insights and knowledge about the particular climate of self-publishing, I don’t want to discredit this, yet along with some structure and organizational issues, his tone is what can make or break the reader’s experience of this book, he can be read as discouraging and critical of the publishing industry and at times mocks the books it creates. I struggled with this tone. At around page 112, I finally started to understand the reasoning behind this particular lens. Diehl had a very terrible experience publishing his first book. He was betrayed by someone in the industry who claimed they could help him with all aspects of the process. A claim that is simply impossible to fulfill. Much like one person cannot fulfill all the working elements of the publishing process, one book cannot communicate it. Diehl is really good at talking about his writing process and market placement, yet with the tasks he likely outsources: editing, cover design, and book formatting are described in more basic terms. I want to say one final thing about tone: “If what you have to say can be (and has been) better said by another author, find something else to say. To know what is right for you to make the focus of your first book, you will need to be willing to * Tiffany Watson [email protected] 1
Portland State University, Portland, USA
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Publishing Research Quarterly
introspect far deeper than most wannabe authors ever do.” If you can get past these two lines from the second chapter than you may be the right reader for this book and this review is for you. While there are pockets of great information, they would be easier to find if the book was organized by subject-specific content rather than like a publishing timeline. The Influential Author like many publishing books is organized to mimic the publishing process: conception of idea, writing process, editing process, a combination of marketing and design processes, promotion, and some final thoughts/conclusions. I don’t think this book needs to be organized this way. For example, Diehl breaks down book pricing in relation to royalties really well. It is specific to the Amazon KDP platform, which is a vital distributio
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