Check out the transcript of the podcast:

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Hello and welcome to the First Book Podcast – India’s first and only podcast dedicated to helping first-time authors. In this podcast series, we have conversations with best-selling authors and business leaders to understand how they successfully cracked their first book and lessons they can give for future authors. This podcast is done in association with Notion Press, one of India’s largest publishing ecosystems. In this episode, we are having a conversation with Sandy Carter, who is the General Manager at IBM and a social business evangelist. She is focused on critical areas of business ecosystems like big data, cloud, mobile, social, and analytics, which is a half-a-trillion-dollar market opportunity. Sandy is an award-winning author of three books, including the best-selling book Get Bold, which has been translated into nine languages. In this short podcast, Sandy shares her experience on how her book has helped build her personal brand as a thought leader and consequently a business. Let’s listen in. Here is a great podcast for writers to begin their publishing journey.

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Kiruba: Sandy, thank you for coming on the First-book podcast. You’ve authored three books, fabulous, so congratulations on the launch of your latest book.

Sandy: Thank you so much. It’s an honor to be here.

Kiruba: How much of an impact has you writing the books had on your reputation and the rub off on the company IBM?

Sandy: Tremendous amount of reputation. I will tell you that riding down what you were and being willing to share your expertise and experience makes a huge difference. You know we’re no longer knowledge workers, we’re learning workers. And so, I think that those people who were open APIs and open up their knowledge for others, are valued at a higher level and I think the books able you to share that information and to share it widely.

Kiruba: What motivated you to even think of authoring a book?

Sandy: Well, I didn’t make a list when I was a little girl on top 100 things I wanted to do in my life and writing a book was one of those. And then when people started asking me “How are you using social to grow certain businesses at IBM?” it found myself telling the same story over and over again. So, I actually wrote some blog posts and they got some tens and thousands of hits, publishers approached me and said, “Look, you’ve really got something that people want to hear about. Let’s put it in a book form and that can help you teach many more people in scale,” and thus the book was born.

Kiruba: Beautiful. What advice would you give for people who are contemplating to write a book but can’t get started?

Sandy: Oh, I would say, “Just do it.” Write a little bit every day. Start out with ten minutes and just write down your thoughts. If you are not a writer, I find that a lot of times I’ll use a video device and I’ll speak it and there are open-source, free tools that can help you take that voice and write into texts. So, get started because sharing your expertise is what your life is all about, right? It’s about giving back, you know, pulling others forward, and by you sharing that experience, you help everybody to move forward. So, do it would be my answer; just do it.

Kiruba: Brilliant! With the Kindles and the ebooks taking over, do you see a change in shift in reading format and how should authors change their approach?

Sandy: Yeah, in fact, my last book I just did a fourth book, I did it only as an ebook and it really did go viral but I did find that the published books still have a lot of power. So, when I go and speak having something to give people, even though you can do book-signings on an iPad, having that written copy is still very important to many, many people. So, if you can do an ebook and print some copies, I think, it’s still today at least is really something important to do that.

Kiruba: The best of both worlds, right?

Sandy: The best of both worlds! I do think that in the future, books will be done in video chapters. I do think that videos are on the rise and I think that video-chaptered books will be the books of the future.

Kiruba: Brilliant! With that, thank you so much, Sandy. It’s been such a pleasure.

Sandy: Thank you so much. Thanks for the honor. I love being here in India and thank you so much for inviting me to your podcast.

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Kiruba: You were listening to the first book podcast, which is India’s first podcast specially aimed at first time authors. Do tune in every week to notionpress.com/podcast to follow new conversations with bestselling authors to hear their tips, tricks, and techniques to become a published author. On that note, a word of appreciation to Notion Press for supporting this show. I would love to hear your feedback and encourage you to write to me at kiruba@kiruba.com. Until next week, take care and bye!