Why a Book Still Beats All Other Credibility Signals

Most senior leaders have a book in them. Very few ever let it out — and the ones who do often watch it disappear without trace. This conversation is about why that happens, and what the leaders who get it right do differently.

In this episode

Lynnaire Johnston is joined by Jaqui Lane and Gillian Whitney — two of the region's leading book strategists — for a conversation about why a business book remains one of the most powerful visibility tools available to a senior professional, even in an age where AI can generate content at scale. Jaqui works with executives to develop books that are strategically positioned from the first word; Gillian focuses on making books work as long-term marketing and visibility assets. Together, they cover what holds capable leaders back, what separates a book that opens doors from one that collects dust, and why the AI era has actually raised the credibility stakes for authors who do the work properly.

Key takeaways

• The biggest thing holding senior leaders back from writing is fear of peer criticism — not lack of ideas or time. The imposter syndrome that hits accomplished people when they sit down to write is almost universal, but the response on the other side of publishing rarely matches the dread that preceded it.
• A book that tries to contain everything a person knows almost always fails. Clarity of purpose — knowing exactly who you're writing for and what single challenge you're helping them solve — is the decision that determines whether a book does strategic work or sits on a shelf.
• A book functions as a discovery asset and a pre-qualification tool. It puts you in front of audiences who weren't searching for you, and it answers the questions a potential client or collaborator would otherwise ask on a first call.
• Book marketing isn't a launch week — it's a sustained, ongoing practice. The authors whose books continue to open doors are the ones who treat the book as a permanent part of their visibility strategy, not a project they've finished.
• AI cannot write a business book worth reading. It can support structure, marketing copy, and organisation — but the stories, the hard-won insight, and the human specificity that make a book credible are things only the author can provide. In an era of AI-generated content, a well-authored book is a stronger credibility signal than it has ever been.

Links mentioned

• Lynnaire Johnston and Michelle J. Raymond's book — Business Gold

About Jaqui Lane

Jaqui Lane is a book strategist and publishing consultant based in Australia who works with senior leaders and executives to develop business books that do strategic work — from the first concept through to publication. She brings a rigorous, purpose-first approach to the writing process and works with clients across Australia and New Zealand. 

Connect with Jaqui on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/in/jaquilane/

About Gillian Whitney

Gillian Whitney is an author visibility strategist and Toastmasters-trained communicator based in the United States who helps authors treat their books as long-term marketing assets. She specialises in building the visibility platforms and promotional strategies that ensure a book reaches the audience it was written for. 

Connect with Gillian on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/in/gillianwhitney/

Link•Ability Blueprint – the system Lynnaire uses with every client. linkability.biz/services/the-linkability-blueprint

Lynnaire on LinkedIn — Connect or follow her for regular AI visibility strategies and updates 

Lynnaire's book — Link•Ability: 4 Powerful Strategies to Maximise Your LinkedIn Success 

The Strategic Executive Visibility Review is designed to answer exactly that. It’s a one-off audit that reveals where your visibility stands right now. Find out more and book here.

Transcript

Lynnaire Johnston 0:48

Recently, I hosted a LinkedIn Live with Jackie Lane, who works with senior leaders to develop business books that do real strategic work, and Gillian Whitney, who specializes in making books work as long-term visibility assets. The reason I'm bringing this conversation into the podcast is because of its relevance to the question of online visibility of senior leaders and professionals. In my last episode, I looked at the first foundation of the Linkability Blueprint, Discovery. How LinkedIn and AI find you. How you become findable by the right people, even when you're not actively posting. A book is one of the most powerful discovery tools available to a senior professional, and it's one that most people dramatically underuse. It puts you in front of audiences who weren't searching for you. It gets you invited into rooms you didn't know existed. It signals expertise to AI systems in a way that a dormant LinkedIn profile simply cannot. But here's the thing Jackie and Gillian make very clear. Most business books fail before a word is written. Not because the author lacks expertise, but because they never answered the questions that determine whether a book opens doors or collects dust. That's what today's conversation is all about. And I start by asking Jackie, what holds senior leaders back from writing a book?

Jaqui Lane 2:38

Typically it's it's fear, um, and that comes out as imposter syndrome. Um and and I I constantly find this really interesting because you know, um both Gillian and I are probably dealing with very highly capable uh executives and people in their field, and they come across as being super confident. But when it comes to their own writing and their own ideas and their own book, this whole imposter thing comes sweeping in. And when I've delved into it a lot, primarily that is because they fear the criticism of their peer group. Because it's one thing to stand up and talk to a group of people, it's another thing completely to put those ideas or you know, have your ideas and put them in paper and share that with the world. And and I've had people who say they can't, they just can't do it. So that fear imposter syndrome thing would be the biggest thing that I see.

Lynnaire Johnston 3:38

Certainly, that was what hit me when I decided to write my first book. I was lucky though, I had an uh impetus to write it, in that I had uh just been uh ranked New Zealand's number one LinkedIn expert. And my rationale was what does everybody have? What does every expert have? They have a book. Uh and so that really prompted me to get going um on it. But all the way through it, I felt I really wasn't sure. Because I'd never considered myself an expert before. And so it was a real struggle for me to overcome that imposter syndrome um and get the book out there. But uh once I did, I was really surprised that the response wasn't, oh, you you think you can write a book, do you? Um it was, oh wow, this is fantastic, we really like it. The response was um amazing and opened a lot of doors that I did not even know were closed. So I was um I think there's some real value in writing a business book for sure. So, Gillian, what separates the books that actually do something for a person's career and ones that just sit on a shelf?

Gillian Whitney 4:47

Hmm. I think it's all about getting the book into the right people and getting that book read. And I think one of the largest mistakes people make is that they think they have to, probably combating that whole imposter syndrome is I have to write the biggest best book ever. And they and they go out and they decide they're gonna write the war and peace of whatever their subject. I'm gonna everything, everything but the kitchen sink is gonna be in this book. But the problem is if they don't have clarity about well, what's the purpose of what you're writing about, and you don't know who you're writing it for, you're just stuffing a lot of stuff into a book, and that's not necessarily gonna get read. And I've seen a lot of people do that, and it breaks my heart because they know how hard they work. But in my opinion, you're better off targeting a specific audience with a specific one idea of, you know, get really get down to that clarity of purpose and know what's the goal of the book, who's the book for, and make it only be as long as it needs to be. And I I tell people go for that airplane read. Let somebody hop on a plane in Dallas and get to Chicago. And by the time they're in Chicago, they've read it and now they can take action. So I think that's what's really important is making sure you have clarity and that it's a book that can be easily consumed, and then the person can take action.

Lynnaire Johnston 6:16

That makes sense to me. Uh, if you're traveling from New Zealand to say London, uh, there could be quite a lot longer read, I have to say, Jillian. But I take your point that in um that is a really good thing. I think too, there's a lot of padding in some books that's not necessarily not necessary that people find a little bit difficult these days. And certainly I think that uh if I were writing linkability again, I would probably cut it down considerably. Right, let's move on. And this is a question for both of you, and we'll start with you, Jackie. Um, I said in my own um post that that this week that a book is still the best business card that you can create, because I believe it is. Do you agree with that? If so, um does it still hold up in 2026? Why? Um when there are so many other ways to demonstrate expertise.

Jaqui Lane 7:04

Okay, so um two of my favorite subjects. Uh so I'm like you, I'm I'm a I'm a print book person, so I've always been focused on print books. Um, but uh I think having a print book as a as one of your suite of ways to to communicate your idea is good. So I actually think that now that we've got print books, audio and ebooks, you've got a great way to actually expand um the visibility of your book to your to your audiences. Um and I think even more importantly, in the age of AI and AI slop and fake and lack of trust and lack of human, uh, actual physical book actually is an antidote to so much of that stuff that we're all exhausted by. Uh, because there's still a stature and a credibility to a print printed book that no social media can really deliver. And in fact, it's hard. Um, yeah, so in an age of fake and AI slop, I think a printed book is actually even more credible uh and and and stronger for reputation.

Gillian Whitney 8:21

Great, Jillian. Well, I call books business cards on steroids because they open doors for you and they get remembered. And for instance, if you are applying for a speaking gig and you're up against somebody else, if you've written the book, if everything's all equal, you know, you're both great speakers, you have great topics, but one's written a book and one hasn't written a book, you just naturally have the advantage because you look like the expert already in the room. And a lot of times your books can help sort of pre-qualify your clients because I'm all about making your books marketing assets, which kind of goes with the whole business card. So if you have a book and you think about what are the things that I deal with on discovery calls over and over and over again. Well, if you have a book that takes care of that, literally you could send that to the client and they could figure out if they want to work with you or not. It kind of takes all that other stuff out of the way. So I think it's a great way for you know getting attracting clients, getting clients, but also getting visibility on the going from page to stage.

Lynnaire Johnston 9:33

Oh yes. And certainly it does open the podcast invite door. That's been a big thing for me. And uh wasn't something that was ever on my radar before. And uh, once the book was out there, the invite started coming in. It was really astonishing. It was just almost like overnight. So uh definitely right, uh now, where are we? We are going to ask Jackie about working with senior leaders. Um, so you work with people who want their books to do strategic work and you know heavy lifting, um, not just exist. So, what does strategic work actually mean in practice when it comes to writing a book? Can you give me a concrete example of the kind of door a book has opened for someone?

Jaqui Lane 10:16

Yeah, and and Jillian's actually touched on this, and it's it's so nice to have Gillian here because I think we're plugged into the same brain actually. Um so you know, a lot of people, probably like with Gillian as well, come to me and say, I really want a book and write a book, and and um I've got all this knowledge and I want to share it with the world, and I'm going, well, that's great. Can we just put you to one side for a moment and let me cover a couple of questions? Why do you want to do it? You know, what are your goals? Uh, what are you trying to achieve? And most people haven't thought about that, number one. And then kind of understanding what those are or that those goals are, the next question is who are you writing for and what are their challenges? In other words, get out of your own way, because let's take, let's assume that you know your staff. So the real question is, who are you writing it for? What are their top two or three challenges? And how is your book going to help them solve those challenges? So, so that's that's the kind of strategic piece for me. And I would say probably 95% of my clients have never thought about their book like that. Um, so we don't even get to doing anything until we've actually another those things out.

Lynnaire Johnston 11:39

Makes sense to me. If you don't know where you're going, how can we make sure that you get there? All right. Um, Jillian, um, my book, Linkability, is coming up six years old. I can't believe that it's been that long. Jackie, I bet you can't believe it's been that long either. But it spent quite a bit of time um in the shadows uh compared to uh Business Gold, which is the blue number that you can see at the bottom on my other site, um, which was co-authored with Michelle J. Raymond. It is the world's only book about LinkedIn company pages, uh, but Michelle was excellent about promoting it, and so consequently that got a lot more um attention. Um, and that came out a year later, and of course, as you know, we um did another version and you were involved um with that, held great book launches for us. So thank you so much for that. Um, so you work on author visibility, right? So, what should someone do with a book that hasn't had the attention it deserves even after publication? Because this is such a problem for many, many people, I believe. And you might actually want to discuss that about what happens before publication, too, because I think most people ignore that part of it as well.

Gillian Whitney 12:57

Well, I think the problem that you get is that not all not all authors are writers. So we have that to start with, but also too, writers and authors aren't marketers. That's a totally different hat. And I think that people have this crazy feeling of, oh, I'm just gonna put my book on Amazon and Amazon's gonna sell my book for me. And they don't realize that it's like, no, you have to be strategic and you have to be a marketer. And too many people focus on, okay, I'll do the book launch. And they think about I'm gonna have a book launch party and maybe I'll have something in a restaurant and I'll do this and I'll do that, and a couple, and and they do that book launch week, and then that's like that's it. They set it and forget it. And the thing is, is that marketing is a long game. It you never stop marketing, you have to continue, and so you need to have a strategic plan that goes beyond the book launch, and you have to think it through. And that's where you have to figure out what is my visibility plan? What how am I going to continue to market this and let people know? Because I'm telling you, I've gone on my third, fourth, I've done six books now. And amazingly, every time I launch a book, somebody will go, I didn't even know you did a first book, let alone you're on your third, your fourth, your fifth. Because people are busy thinking about themselves. They're not thinking about you. So what we have to do is get out of our writer-author bubble, and we have to become marketers. Now we don't have to become salespeople. So that's good to know because most of us don't really like sales, but we have to market it, which means make the book visible to the people that need it. And kind of going with what Jackie said, if you are very clear about who your book is for, then your job is I just need to get to the people that are looking for my message. And that doesn't feel icky. That feels aligned with I'm doing a disservice if I don't continue to market this book. And you can do that with podcast appearances, you can do book clubs, you can do lives, you can do articles, you can repurpose your own book. There's so many ways that you can continue to market it, but it all starts in your head first with that marketing mindset of I have to get this to the people that need it, as opposed to I'm trying to get forced people to buy my book because we're not for everyone. We're for the people that are looking for our message. That's very true.

Lynnaire Johnston 15:36

I've got a member of my linkability community who had put his book out about a year ago, um, Achille Atoray. He's one of your clients, Jackie, if I remember rightly. Um, and he's a member of our Linkability members community. And every week he's out there with a post talking about his book. The not very long post, but they all and they always have a good message in them about his area of expertise, which is data transformation and AI. And he's he's got the, you know, he's right on the money with the right book at the right time, I think. But every week without fail, there is at least one post from him that talks about his book. And in fact, I'm not certain he doesn't talk about his book in every single post that he puts out there. And I don't think that that is too much in this age when visibility on our posts is right down. Uh putting in a mention of your book, particularly if it's new, in every post or every certainly every second or third post, is a very good idea. And I also think that making sure that you put it on your profile in your featured section, or even having an experience section or a role about it, is a very good idea too, because most people are not even doing that much with their books, which I think is a real shame. But I did an article just this week, um, which you were both involved with, that talked about um the different books of the um members of the of our linkability members community. And in fact, what was really interesting about that was how many members of the community are in fact authors, and so I found that one really fascinating to see what kind of books people were writing about, and it was a really varied um level of uh expertise and topics. Um, and it there are a lot more people out there who are writing books than I think most of us realize. And before I wrote a book, I didn't know any authors, well, except for Jackie. And once I start wrote a book, all of a sudden they seem to come out of the woodwork. It was absolutely fascinating. So different kinds of doors can open, um, I think, because a lot of those people, like you two, have become friends. And so uh there are more benefits to writing a book, uh, I think, than most people really understand. So, Jackie, let me come back to you. When you're working with someone at the beginning, before a word is written, what's the single most important question you need them to be able to answer?

Jaqui Lane 18:04

And you might, you've already sort of kind of answered this in a pre-and-I'm gonna reiterate it because it's just mission critical. You know, get out of your own way. Who's your audience? What are their key challenges? Uh, what do you want to get out of the book for yourself? And and because those things then will help you identify of all the knowledge and insights that you have, which ones are you going to put into this book to help your audience solve their challenges? Because, as Julian said, you cannot write a brain dump of everything you know, and you shouldn't, because there might be two or three books in that knowledge, which is in fact is a really good point on its own. Um, so you know, I often spend two or three sessions with my clients just nutting this out because it sounds easy, but it actually requires some really deep thinking because you can't pray, I mean, I have a view that you can't pray and spray, right? You just can't write a book and whatever at a big braid dump and hope it works. You know, if you're going to make a positive difference in the world, uh, which I really believe about a book, you need to do the thinking up front.

Lynnaire Johnston 19:18

That makes sense to me. Um, and Julian, when we're talking about visibility tools and the role of um books, what is it that actually makes a book work as a visibility tool? Is it the writing, the positioning, the promotion of it, something else entirely? Having a YouTube channel, reading your book aloud.

Gillian Whitney 19:40

Yeah, I I think I think, first of all, again, going back to what Jackie said, is is being clear who is the book for, what's the goal, and how your book your book serves that bridge of getting them from here to there, because that's what your book is about. And once you're really clear on that, then you can have that visibility plan where you're saying, okay, maybe I'm gonna have a YouTube channel and I'm gonna talk about it, or maybe I'm gonna try and go on podcasts. But again, you want to go on relevant podcasts. So if I'm writing a book about, I don't know, LinkedIn, then I want to go on social media podcasts, or I, you know, or what's my angle? Because maybe I want to talk to introverts, you know, or extroverts, or so think of the audience and think about, well, where is that audience from my book, my ideal reader? Where are they hanging out? Because that's what you want to do is you want to get in front of them. So you have to figure out where are they, which again is probably why you want to build that author platform before you even start writing that book. You know, I know some people that have come to me and said, okay, I want to write this book, but they have no social media presence at all. And I just go, Well, how do you think you're gonna sell this book? And they're like, Amazon ads. And I said, then they're just gonna always keep going. Like you're just gonna continue to pay for Amazon ads, and that might not even guarantee you sales because people will come with the ad and say, hmm, there's no reviews. I don't know if it's got social proof. So there's it's really tricky, but if you don't have that platform, then you probably don't even know who you're writing to in the first place. So you're doing what Jackie said, spray and pray. So I think our again, our visibility is about getting clarity on the goals, the what are you covering, you know, and how are you helping people, what's keeping them up at night, those kind of crazy things, and then being really clear on that audience, and then you can make those visibility goals.

Lynnaire Johnston 21:46

That makes sense to me. Right, one more uh for you both um in this part of our show today, and this one is where we turn to AI. We're going to talk more about that, but for now I want to just canvas this particular idea. AI, do you see how I rolled my eyes then? Can write a book in hours. Uh but um does that change the strategic case for writing a book yourself, or does it actually make it more important? Jackie, you first.

Jaqui Lane 22:20

Um, I'm very vocal on the subject, as you might imagine. Um, AI can't write. Okay, it wasn't designed to write, it can't write. It is a predictive machine that can pull together bunches of information and then it spews it out, usually in three cadence paragraphs or three cadence words with lots of EM dashes in between. Uh and it it Don't have the capacity to write what we fo call long form content. So AI can't write. It can do lots and lots of really great things. It can help look, you know, help you with your book titles, your content structure, your marketing, some of your marketing, you know, draft media releases. There's a bunch of stuff that it can do, but it cannot write a book and don't even try. Because if I see a book and I it takes me one paragraph to know whether it's been written by AI or not. And none of us want that. That's AI's slot. And we don't need more of that in the world. So don't do it. It can't do it.

Gillian Whitney 23:33

That was very definitive. I I think that AI is an incredible tool and it can definitely help you with your organization. It can help you if you are missing a story and you're like, okay, I've talked about this on a podcast or I talked about this on a video, you could feed those transcripts into AI and it could help you get clarity on a story and maybe, you know, kind of step back a little bit of like, here's where the story should actually begin. You kind of had this whole preamble we didn't need. And it can help you with those kind of things. But if it's if you're just saying, okay, I'm just gonna go to Chat GPT and I want to write a book about sales, and it you just ask it to write it for you. That's not a book. That's just it's like a report. It's like an it's like a Wikipedia entry. That's the level of what you're getting. It's our stories, it's our raw emotions. That's what is so good about books. And see, I'm a toastmaster first. I've always been a lifelong lover of books. I've been a reader. I think I was reading before I was even born. I was just, you know, busy. I was busy as I was being cooked and baked as a little teeny baby. But it's like I came into the world reading. I love reading, but I also love speaking. And so I have a Toastmasters background. And the first thing that we learned in Toastmasters is story, stories, stories. Stories are everything. And if you want to cement your point, make your story sticky so that when people are are you're trying to teach something, back it up with a story because we don't remember data. And AI can just give you data, it can't give you those stories. So if I start talking about the lessons I learned from my mother or my father, or you know, what happened to me and the struggles that I went through, people are reading those because they go, if it happened to you, it happened to me. And Linair, you started at the beginning of our show today talking about imposter syndrome. And people would be like, What? Linaire, what had imposter syndrome? Well, then there's hope for me because sometimes people just see where you are today. They don't know where you were six years ago, struggling to say, Who am I to write this book? So we need to hear those kind of stories. So that's something AI can't do. That's the human element.

Lynnaire Johnston 26:01

My thanks to Jackie Lane and Gillian Whitney for this frank and revealing discussion about the role of books in the AI world. Both our previous episode and this conversation have been about discovery. Specifically today, how a book extends your discoverability into rooms and audiences your LinkedIn profile alone cannot reach. Discovery gets you found. Perception determines what happens in the next few seconds. What a person and increasingly what an AI system immediately understands about you. Whether your expertise is obvious, whether your story makes sense, whether someone trusts you before they've spoken a single word to you. Most senior leaders have a perception problem they don't even know they have. Their profile was built to record a career, not to communicate a direction. And in an era where AI is forming judgments about your expertise based on the signals your profile sends, a LinkedIn profile that reads like ACV is a strategic liability. In the next episode, we move to the second foundation of the linkability blueprint, perception. We'll look at what it is, what it includes, and what you can do about it. I'll see you again soon. Bye for now.