Today we’d like to introduce you to Dianna Booher.
Hi Dianna, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
Dianna Booher started writing as a way to survive. A school teacher whose husband was struggling with mental illness, she feared for her two small children and needed a way to make ends meet. She went to a friend for advice, and he asked, “What do you like to do?”
“Well, I used to like to write English themes back in school, but that doesn’t help—I need to figure out how to make a living!”
He pressed, “I didn’t ask how you can make a living; I asked what you like to do.”
“I like to write.”
“Then find out how to make money doing it!”
He had no idea she would take him so seriously—Dianna Booher has launched book
50! In the process of pursuing her passion for writing, Booher has spun off a business that, during the past 40 years, has served almost half of the Fortune 500 companies.
Booher started small, writing a few articles in the first 3-4 months. By total fluke, the first article she submitted was accepted. Being new to the business, she thought, “This is how it works—I send off something, and they publish it.” She soon learned it wasn’t quite that easy to sell to a major New York publisher. But her share of rejections didn’t come until after she was hooked.
When Booher got a contract to write curriculum, she quit her teaching position, mid-
term, to pursue her new-found passion.. Soon after, an editor saw an article of hers
and asked her to turn it into a book, which Simon & Schuster/Messner later turned
into a series of books for young adults.
Eager to learn more, Booher enrolled at the University of Houston to get an MA in
English Literature with a specialization in writing. She studied under award-winning
novelist Beverly Lowry, often referred to as “the female William Faulkner.”
worth an “A,” Booher received an enthusiastic acceptance letter from one of the first publishers who read it! Lowry’s high standards were hard to reach, but Booher pulled an “A” and sold the novel to Kensington/Zebra before graduation.
Eventually, she taught her own novel-writing course at a local community college. In each class, she surveyed students and asked them why they were taking the course.
To her surprise many were from companies in the surrounding area, actually
hoping to improve their business writing skills—novel-writing was the closest thing they
could find.
Booher jumped at the chance to fill this obvious need and began writing her first
business book, Would You Put That in Writing. Meanwhile, Booher solicited additional
input from others about how to appeal to business clients.
One friend, a vice president at Shell Oil, mentioned that Shell was paying “big bucks” to have a vendor teach technical writing to their engineers and lawyers. Driven by the opportunity to meet a business need, Booher repackaged her ideas into a 16-hour course, set an appointment with Shell’s decision maker, and won the contract. This bold move helped launch Dianna Booher’s company, Booher Consultants. Inc. In 2013, she changed the company name to Booher Research Institute.
Not long after Shell hired her, Booher’s writing book hit the shelves, followed closely thereafter by a grammar book. (The newest versions of her writing book is E-Writing: 21st Century Tools for Effective Communication [Pocket Books] and Faster, Fewer, Better Emails {Berrett-Koehler Publishers].
The Houston Chronicle ran a feature story about it, and on that day she called her answering service at noon for messages (yes, that was before voicemail and email). The operator said, “Ms. Booher, I don’t know what you did, but you’ve had 32 calls this morning!” She was soon leading courses and delivering keynotes to companies across the country and eventually around the globe.
With the success of Booher’s writing workshops, it wasn’t long before a client,
ConocoPhillips, asked her about teaching a presentation skills class. The new
curriculum was a natural move for Booher, whose extensive teaching and speaking
events offered the perfect means for fine-tuning her presentation techniques. And, not
surprisingly, the request paved the way for another book, Speak with Confidence.
IBM needed to improve customer service communication across the organization. So,
Booher’s eService workshop and corresponding book, Communicate with
Confidence, were born. Technical writing? Ditto. Email communication? Ditto. Again and
again, Booher listened to the needs of her customers and allowed demand to drive her
response.
These days, in addition to running her company, Booher typically writes a book a
year–either under her own name or as a co-author for another executive wanting to get their message out to the masses.
Because other authors often ask how she gets it all done, she shares her secrets in her exclusive book-coaching program. No matter what motivates people to write—money, marketing a new service or product, promoting their professional expertise, passion for a topic—there are things they have to learn in order to get their books into print.
In her Booher Book Camp coaching program
(www.BooherBookCamp.com), new authors learn everything from writing a proposal to marketing their book to creating spin-off products, to using their books to promote their businesses. Booher loves to share her passion with new and experienced authors. “We all start somewhere, and the best never stop learning and growing!”
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
There have been challenges along the way, of course. To name a few:
–Hiring the best staff with appropriate academic training and interpersonal skills
–Cashflow during tough economic downturns
–Setting up international partnerships
–Negotiating licensing arrangements with Fortune 500 companies buying our programs
–Finding major publishers with capabilities to promote my work around the world
–Traveling nonstop to deliver keynotes and workshops!
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
The major thing Dianna did to market her communication workshops and keynotes as a Hall-of-Fame speaker was to build her brand was writing and selling business and self-help books to major publishers. To date, she has published more than 50 books with these well-known houses: Penguin Random House, Simon and Schuster, HarperCollins, and McGraw-Hill.
She’s primarily known for her communication expertise. That includes topics like executive presence, leadership communication, presentations skills, business writing, technical writing, and book writing/publishing.
In addition to publishing awards on her own work, she takes great pride in the success of her book-coaching clients, who go on to write winning book proposals, earn big advances, and build a business around their books.
In her Booher Book Camps, she personalizes each 3-day, online event to the exact needs of those attending. That is, she doesn’t deliver the same content over and over, but instead focuses the content on each of the writers’ specific book projects.
Can you talk to us about how you think about risk?
Dianna Booher assess risks every time she proposes a new book. As an author, she can spend days or weeks drafting the book proposal and sending it to her agent. And that work can “go down the drain” when the agent is unable to sell the book to a major publisher for whatever reason: 1) They’d just bought a book on the same topic from another author. 2) They don’t see a big enough market for the book’s topic. Or 3) The political and business environment is not right.
Risk-taking is part of almost every job and every industry. I tell my coaching clients that if they can’t deal with rejection and risks, “Don’t even think about writing a book!”
According to John Steinbeck, “Book writing makes horse racing seem like a stable occupation.”
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.BooherResearch.com and https://www.BooherBookCamp.com
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DiannaBooherAuthor/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/diannabooher/
- Twitter: @DiannaBooher
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqnoVzvx47SwObH_fq50kXw
Image Credits
No credits necessary. All copyrights are owned by Dianna Booher.
