Drew McLellan has written seven books. That’s quite an achievement for a man who runs a busy and successful ad agency, as well as the Agency Management Institute (AMI).  

But Drew stumbled upon a clever approach which meant that writing books was a collaboration, and therefore less work for him.  

Drew has worked in advertising for 30 years. He started his own agency, McLellan Marketing Group, in 1995. He's been featured in or published in Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Entrepreneur, Ad Age, New York Times, Washington Post, Ad Age, CNN Business Week, and many others. He hosts the Build A Better Agency Podcast.  

COLLABORATE TO WRITE YOUR BOOK! 

Drew’s first book, 99.3 Random Acts Of Marketing, was published as a result of writing a newspaper column for a while. He then ran into someone who offered to publish the columns in book format. 

Next up came Drew’s Age of Conversation, One, Two, and Three, although at the time Drew didn’t realize that Age of Conversation would be three books. In the early 2000s he read an article about Harvard experimenting with crowdsourced content for a book. This triggered his idea for a core group of around 150 marketing bloggers to produce a book, with each blogger writing one chapter.  

Hundreds of marketing bloggers contributed chapters, and that’s how books two and three were born. Profit from the books - more than $50,000 - was donated to Charity Water.  

“None of my books have I sat down and wrote a book the way everyone thinks you write a book,” says Drew.  

CREATING AUTHORITY, CONNECTIONS, BUSINESS GROWTH 

Drew says his books have contributed significantly to his success. They’ve brought clients, given him credibility, and created new connections. 

“There is a gravitas to being an author that other people afford you, that's different than if you're a podcast host or fill in the blank; you do some other content. There's something about it, probably because everyone thinks it's super hard. But it elevates you above your competitors and it does say something about you and your depth of expertise,” says Drew. 

He thinks of books as content that opens doors. “So whether you're dropping them in the mail to prospects, or you are using it as a tool to get podcasts, a book is absolutely worth it. It is probably one of the best marketing tools for your business that I can think of. 

“My book is a moneymaker, not that people pay $19.95 for the book, but that they buy coaching and consulting, and come to workshops, and join our peer groups. That rings the cash register in a much more significant way for me than a $20 book.   

USE A PRESENTATION TO WRITE A BOOK 

Drew’s next book, Secrets of Ad Agency Owners, was developed in a similar way to Age of Conversation.  

Explains Drew: “By now, I owned AMI. There were a bunch of agency owners who wanted to be authors, but they don't want to actually write a book. So I did the exact same thing we did with Age of Conversation. I said: ‘I'm going to give you a theme. If you want to write a chapter of this book, send it to us.  

“My agency laid it out, designed it, self-published it through Amazon's self-publishing. So that was the next two again . . .  I wrote a chapter, right and everybody else contributed. And again, what we did with that money is any money we made, we donated to a charity.” 

For his latest book, Sell With Authority, Drew partnered with digital marketer Stephen Woessner, and the two offered a two-day workshop selling with authority. The workshop was filmed and transcribed the bones of the book.  

“We had to do a lot of rewriting because how you present is very different from how you would write. We had to augment what we taught with more content,” says Drew. “So of all the books I've written, that's the one that probably took me the most writing. Stephen wrote his chapters, I wrote my chapters. Then I took all of the chapters, and then edited all of them so they sounded like they were coming from one voice.” 

When it comes to marketing a book, Drew says it’s essential to have an audience and think about marketing before your book is written. 

LINKS Twitter Facebook LinkedIn DrewMcLellan.com 

SUBSCRIBE TO THE PUBLISHED AUTHOR PODCAST 

If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or anywhere else you listen to podcasts. You can also watch episodes of the podcast on YouTube. 

And if you want to spread the word, please give us a five-star review (we read every single one!) and share this page with your friends.  

We also share valuable snippets from podcast episodes on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook. 

ABOUT THE HOST 

The Published Author Podcast is hosted by Josh Steimle, founder of Published Author. Josh is a book author himself and his article writing has been featured in over two dozen publications including Time, Forbes, Fortune, Mashable, and TechCrunch. He's a TEDx speaker, the founder of the global marketing agency MWI, a skater, father, and husband, and lives on a horse farm in Boston. Learn more at JoshSteimle.com.