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Megan Walker: Hello, and welcome to the Healthcare Thought Leaders Show. I'm Megan Walker, and today I'm joined by very special guest, Anna Featherstone. Hi, Anna. How are you?

Anna Featherstone: Fabulous. Thank you.

Megan Walker: I met Anna in person only recently but feel that I've known her for quite a while, because I have been reading her books. Ironically, I've been reading them about horticulture, which is a side passion of mine and having a small farm. And then I discover that Anna has a book on Look, It's Your Book! I was looking for an author who can also teach health and medical people how to write and publish a healthcare book, and the planets aligned. So Anna, here we are.

Anna Featherstone: I know. It's fantastic. I love it.

Megan Walker: Very serendipitous. Quite soon in September, Anna's going to be running an event literally called How to Write and Publish a Healthcare Book. We're so lucky to have her in our circle, and then that will turn into a little three-month program. But to get us all excited about the possibilities of having a healthcare book, Anna, tell us a bit about yourself first, and then why beautiful books matter.

Anna Featherstone: Sure. I'm a consultant with the Australian Society of Authors, I judge things like the Australian Business Book Awards and Australian Travel Writers Awards, and I do workshops for Writing New South Wales and Byron Writers Festival. My passion is nonfiction. I still love fiction, but nonfiction is my bag. And that's what a lot of healthcare professionals are writing, whether it's to do with their actual expertise, or maybe it's memoir, or the things they've learned from their practice and how that's played out.

Megan Walker: You're already speaking into my heart. As soon as you said memoir, I thought, gosh, one thing I know to be true from all the thousands of healthcare professionals I've worked with is that body of knowledge they've built up over so many years, through the anecdotes, through the stories, through knowing what works. That opportunity to leave a legacy piece for other people who might be on a healthcare journey, or even on a similar career journey. That would have to be a huge opportunity out there, wouldn't it?

Anna Featherstone: Yes. When you're a specialist in something, that kind of knowledge and love is such a generous gift to give other people. Some people are like, "Oh, do I have anything to actually say?" But the thing is, you really do. If you care, if you get angry, if you laugh, there's something in those feelings that's worth sharing. If you get frustrated, there's something in there, so dig in. If something makes you cry, or if something moves you, all these things work together to help you work out what your book is going to be about. Is it a purely scientific piece, or is it something a bit more? Is it to entertain? To move people forward in a different direction? To change the conversation, or just illuminate something? That's the beauty of books.

Megan Walker: So many opportunities. I don't think we have to convince this audience much about why books matter, because this is a group of readers. I don't have to scratch too far down under the surface to say most of our people here are going to have a book in them. But tell me from your perspective, why do books matter?

Anna Featherstone: Books matter because even though we're doing a fabulous podcast and we can get a sense of each other, books signal depth. Depth shows thought and mastery, and other elements that just a conversation or an interview can't do. It's permanent and it's portable. It's a credential. People say a book's a very expensive business card, and in a way, it's a business card that might run to 200 pages. It signals authority. It creates a level of respect, because it's the process of having written a book that's actually the important thing. A lot of people think it's all about, oh, the book's done. The thing is how you change in the process of actually writing it. So you have to dig deep. Yes, AI can spit out this and that, but when your brain is tuned in, it changes how you see things, and you grow as a professional and personally as well.

Megan Walker: Amazing. So, can AI replace the work of an author, Anna?

Anna Featherstone: It depends what answer you want. My answer is definitely not. I spend a lot of time at writers festivals, a lot of time reading manuscripts for awards, and I work with authors on their books. You can tell an AI manuscript because it can be very competent, but it doesn't make me feel.

Megan Walker: It's lacking some soul?

Anna Featherstone: Yes. AI is going to keep getting better all the time, and yes, it can pull it off. But the thing is, AI can't have lived your life. AI hasn't been in that room when you sat and talked with that person, or when you discovered something. Those are the things that now matter, because otherwise people can just go and type an AI search and get an answer. What people are looking for is that connection, that extra story. When I'm reading, I know if I'm reading AI because my eyes just stay flat. But when I read something that matters and that's so human and so true, my eyes get wide, or they crinkle because they're laughing, or they get glary. My eyeballs tell me. So people can use AI in part, and I know people are using it to lay out books. That's why so many books are getting done so quickly, because they're using it to outline. But the thing is, you might end up cookie cutter if you do that. There's a place for it as well. We all obviously use AI currently in our spell checks and grammar. So it's a bit of a mix, but what you really need to bring to the process is original thought and feeling.

Megan Walker: Love that. So true. And I think that's going to become more in demand, isn't it? As we get more depersonalised, we're going to seek out the human, the human feeling, the human condition.

Anna Featherstone: Yes. And that's what writing a book lets you do too. When I talk about the process changing you, in your book you might have to reach out to other people in your space for endorsements. You might need to reach out to organisations. So the people you're meeting expands as well. If you're just going back and forward with AI, you don't actually do that outreach, and all those things actually matter when you produce a book.

Megan Walker: You miss the community. So lovely. And in terms of opportunities that a book can create for someone, this is a living example. I've read your book, I've reached out to you, here we are, and we're going to be working together. Amazing. Tell us, for our clinicians who are thinking, "Well, I want the heartfelt joy of having my work on paper," give us a few other potentials of what can happen when you do birth your book into the world.

Anna Featherstone: Number one, it is a legacy. You leave something behind, and you can always update it if you change your mind a few years later and want to add something in. For me, one of the big things it does is it clears my head out. All those things you carry, that your brain holds onto as important, you finally get them on paper, which leaves your brain free to have whole new experiences. And go on to maybe write another book about something different, or just to experience life differently. So that's one thing a book can do.

Megan Walker: How cathartic. It's cleaning out the mental medicine cabinet.

Anna Featherstone: Exactly. But if you want to talk more commercially about what it can do reputation-wise, obviously it can lead to media interviews and speaking engagements. It can lead to other consultants recommending you because they're like, "Oh, this person is the person who wrote the book on that." It can lead to you gaining new employees, because people want to work for the best, or people want to work for someone who has authority, which can be shown in a book, or because they've read the book and they're like, "I would love to work with that person." So it can help with staffing.

Megan Walker: Amazing. So many things. We must never say again that it's the best business card ever. There's so much more to it than that. And thinking about new authors, you must come across some misconceptions that people have in their head of how a book writing, authoring, publishing process goes. What are three of the biggest ones that you could clear up for us? Give us some myth busting.

Anna Featherstone: Some people come in with the idea that they're not a writer. That thing in their head that says, "I'm not a writer." Their teacher maybe said something in sixth grade, or they've never actually written. But the thing is, if you can have a conversation, you can actually write a book. Because there are other ways to do it. You could use a voice recorder and your notes. You can just speak. You can have someone interview you to get the words down. You can also work with a ghostwriter if you're too busy to do certain things. That's a series of interviews which then get transposed and worked on. So, "I'm not a writer," is a misconception.

Another big one is: my book is for everyone. Everyone will want to read this. We all kind of hope that. Anyone who's ever had this particular condition, or every woman will want this. This is not true. Focusing down on the audience is really important, because that helps discoverability. I'll give you an example. This is a crazy example, nothing to do with medicos. You can have books on crafting. Books on crochet, books on whatever. Then you can have books on making rugs within that genre, or a scarf. But if you keep digging down, there's a book on how to craft with cat hair.

Megan Walker: Visceral reaction.

Anna Featherstone: But you can see how tight that becomes for marketing. Suddenly you've got, oh, cat owners who like to craft becomes an audience, as opposed to everyone wants to craft. That helps you with the marketing and finding your audience by being able to narrow things down.

Megan Walker: That's such a fantastic sensory example. I'm so allergic to cats, so I just had the biggest sensory response.

Anna Featherstone: That will be a book you're not buying.

Megan Walker: I'm not for that one. But I love that. It's so true with marketing. I used to say to people, your audience is... And I'm actually hearing you talk about a book like I would think about a new product development. There's a lot of process the same, like really understanding the audience.

Anna Featherstone: Yes.

Megan Walker: Writing for the audience and niching into the audience's wants and needs. There are some parallels along there, which is really interesting.

Anna Featherstone: And working out what's your key difference. What makes your book different to every other book on the subject?

Megan Walker: Yes. So true. Amazing. So then what are the flip side. We've looked at some things of what not to do. What are a couple of key ingredients that make for a successful author?

Anna Featherstone: I think putting aside your perfectionism.

Megan Walker: Ooh.

Anna Featherstone: Because you need to put that aside just to get that draft down. It's okay to just get that draft down. Don't worry about what anyone's going to say, what any of your colleagues are going to say. It's really just getting out the first draft. Dropping the perfectionism. Also, patience is what makes a successful author, because you actually have to be patient to do the thinking. You need to be patient during the publishing process, and then you have to be patient and hopeful because not everything matters on launch day. Books have a very long tail. If you write a good book, it might take a few years for someone to discover it, but it will happen, because it's the writing of the good book, not rushing it out. So being patient.

Megan Walker: Interesting. So good. As we start to wrap up a little bit, from your perspective, what advantages do healthcare professionals have when it comes to taking this next step of writing and publishing a healthcare book? What have they already got going for them? Apart from being wonderful.

Anna Featherstone: Well, hopefully expertise. You're not starting from scratch. You've studied this. You've lived it. You've experimented. You've had thoughts on it. You've seen different things happening. So you've got that already. You also understand your audience deeply because you understand their fears, the questions they have, their language. You've got real-world case studies that compel your thinking. You've got credibility, hopefully. But also the book will help you with that credibility. It's like a rocket booster to that. The thing is to realise that you have a lot already going for you, but the actual process of writing it makes you more credible. It sharpens your thinking, and it might even give you whole new ideas, because you have to think deeply.

Megan Walker: So good. It's a life-changing process. I can really hear that. It's such a chrysalis process of going inward and going deep, to then emerge.

Anna Featherstone: True. We'll do the butterfly, not the cat analogy. I like that.

Megan Walker: I had to switch up my creatures. One thing I will say is a lot of clinicians will tell me over and over, "My information is the same as everyone else's. I'm a psychologist, and so other psychologists already know what I know." And I will say to them, "Absolutely not. I have not met two of you the same who had the same experience." Would you have that same thought for authors, no two authors alike?

Anna Featherstone: Oh, absolutely. Every life is different, and the way we see things is different. It depends who your audience is, and how your audience likes to be spoken to. Are you writing for other clinicians? What do you bring to the table there that might be different? Who you are writing for helps sort all that out. And then you've got your own unique voice that you bring. Everyone sees the world in such a different lens.

Megan Walker: Amazing.

Anna Featherstone: So that shouldn't be a problem.

Megan Walker: No, not a problem at all. No two authors alike, no two clinicians alike. I love it. Well said.

Anna Featherstone: And that's why there are thousands and thousands of books in certain categories, because they're all written differently.

Megan Walker: Absolutely. Every person is a book. I love it. Anna, we have an exciting opportunity coming up. On the 11th of September, Anna is presenting an event called How to Write and Publish a Healthcare Book, which sits under our healthcare thought leadership work. Then she'll be spending another two sessions in October and November inside with our Healthcare Thought Leaders Lab group, going into more of the detail and mechanics of what's involved. Anna, what can people expect at the event on 11th of September? What will we be talking about? What are they going to walk away with from that session?

Anna Featherstone: Pretty much a deep dive into why it matters and why you can. A bit of the how as well. Some of the sticking points and how to unstick those things. It will be a great introduction.

Megan Walker: And the best way to publish?

Anna Featherstone: Absolutely. Of course, that depends on what we're trying to achieve, and there are so many ways now, whether it's traditional or indie or a mix of both. That's the fun side. Something important to say is so many people use the excuse, "Oh, no one will ever publish it." The thing is now there are so many ways to be published that you should just start writing, because it can find its audience.

Megan Walker: Oh, I love that. So good. I can't wait for this session. I have a closet book hiding within me as well, as I know so many people who are listening to this do. So we're inviting you to open the doors on the closet and bring your book to life. Come and join Anna and I for our event on the 11th of September, and if you'd like to join the Lab then for the following sessions as well. Anna, thank you so much for chatting with me today. I'm so glad that I found you, multi-talented lady.

Anna Featherstone: Such a pleasure.

Megan Walker: Can't wait to be talking all things books with you and my audience coming up very soon. So thank you.

Anna Featherstone: Fabulous. I can't wait to hear what everyone wants to write about.

Megan Walker: So exciting. Thanks again, Anna. Talk to you soon.

Anna Featherstone: Fabulous. Thank you.

Connect with Anna:

Website: https://annafeatherstone.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/annafeatherstonewriter/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AnnaFeatherstoneWriter/
LinkedIn: https://au.linkedin.com/in/anna-featherstone-writer
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B007HTH0C8
Upcoming event with Megan, How to Write and Publish a Healthcare Book: https://www.meganwalker.com/how-to-write-a-healthcare-book