ne of our most popular resources is our London venue at the Crowne Plaza in Kensington. That's because its where ALL our authors start their journey with us. The management and staff are key members of our team and always provide us with a relaxing 5* venue for our authors when they attend our intensive Strategic Book Accelerator workshops. We always perform best in these fabulous surroundings and our authors say they do too.
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e’ve all heard people who say, ‘I’d like to write a book’ or ‘I’ve got a book inside me’, yet somehow we never see anything in print. Maybe you know someone like that?
My name is Kevin Bermingham and I'm the founder of The Successful Author Academy. Thank you for visiting this website and taking the time to check out what we do.
As a company, we're known for helping business-owners, entrepreneurs and specialists to write a Strategic Book that gives them more clarity, credibility and collateral than their competitors.
At the start, everything was done by me of course. And it's my values and aptitudes that have made the Academy what it is today. So let me share a bit of my story, in order to help you understand the values of the company and why, as a team, we're different from any other publishing and author's services company.
I was a successful project manager and management consultant for over twenty years. I’ve planned and managed multi-million-pound projects for several large corporations, such as the Civil Aviation Authority, National Air-Traffic Services, London Electricity, SEEBOARD and Nokia. During that time, I discovered how to get things done on time, when others couldn't.
As a project manager, I frequently overcame problems using a set of simple project-management techniques, which were applicable to any situation; for example, the setting of very tight deadlines. You see, research by the Harvard Business School shows that our ability to achieve goals quickly drops off after just 90 days because we lose focus.
So, in 2010, I wrote and published my first book, Change Your Limiting Beliefs, using these same simple techniques – and I did it in just 30 days, because I didn’t know it was supposed to take longer than that!
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've since moved on to become a book publisher and authors’ mentor. And, incredible though it seems, I still use those same project-management techniques. But now I use them to help authors get their books written and published – FAST!
In 2012, using the same techniques I took my first group of aspiring authors from Proposal, through Prototyping, Planning, Producing, Preparation, Publishing, and then into Productising, Packaging and Promotion – all within 90 days! At the same time, I was simultaneously building my own Successful Author Academy and publishing business from scratch - also within just 90 days.
I personally run one-to-one, bespoke mentoring programmes for business-owners, entrepreneurs and specialists. I help them create a strategic plan for their book - so they write the ‘Right Book’ - and then continue to provide ongoing consultancy services to assure each book’s success.
Plus, as a company, we occasionally run fully integrated group-mentoring and publishing programmes. Because of the number of people involved, the cost of my time is shared without compromising on results so I can provide a similar result for a much more modest fee.
In fact, if someone joins my group-mentoring programme I'll guarantee that, if they work diligently, I can help them get their book out of their head within just 90 days.
Over the years, I've spent a lot of time looking back over my time as a project manager to identify the essential keys to success. You see, the secret of my success came from avoiding the same old dumb mistakes that came up time after time; then I found that the same old dumb mistakes were being made by authors too. Of course, writing a book is also a project, so I applied the very same solutions I'd used as a corporate project manager and found that they also worked for me as an author.
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n 2012, I wrote the first edition of my second book, The Seven Secrets of Successful Authors, so that aspiring authors would have a better chance of writing a Strategic Book quickly and then getting it published. I wanted them to write the Right Book!
However, to be successful, I encourage all my authors to work within Pareto's principle, also known as the 80:20 rule. By that, I mean that you can always complete 80 per cent of any task in just 20 per cent of the time it would take to complete the full 100 per cent.
To put it another way, the last 20 per cent of any task consumes 80 per cent of the effort. I always encourage my authors to accept the fact that a score of 8/10 for their book is perfectly adequate for what they, and their readers, actually need. Otherwise, they will waste at least 18 months writing and ‘polishing’ their manuscript - and then a further 18 months getting it published. Life's too short for that!
I created The Successful Author Academy to combine workshops, group mentoring and one-to-one coaching to convert the skills, knowledge and expertise that people already have into a professionally published book. We also put each book onto Amazon and Kindle. Our programmes all use simple project-management techniques that achieve guaranteed results. Aspiring authors follow a rigid, step-by-step weekly programme, so that they always know exactly what, when and how to do whatever’s needed. We discourage flexibility so that authors don't deviate from either the design or the plan they created at the start. Most aspiring authors need and welcome a high level of accountability - so that's what they get.
My mission is to get the 'Right Book' out of your head and into your hands FAST, so you can quickly get on with your life.
I hope you found this bit of background useful. And if you have any questions at all, then either download Chapter One of my book or jump onto the contact page and apply for a free consultation.
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ver the last year, we've built up a very strong team of professionals and specialists to help our aspiring authors produce the right book quickly, without compromising on quality.